


Wings & Hearts

by radagastcar



Category: 69 Eyes, Apocalyptica (Band), Bandfic - Fandom, HIM (Band), The 69 Eyes, The Rasmus, Ville Valo - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:40:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 54,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24653983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radagastcar/pseuds/radagastcar
Summary: “Wings & Hearts, two sides of evil, that's what you are.Devil's wings and Angel's hearts.”They say that the friends one makes in college are the friends that they will have for life... between Jyrki Linnankivi, Ville Valo, Jussi Vuori and Hanna Ylonen, Sinikka Lotjonen might be screwed.
Relationships: Jyrki 69 | Jyrki Linnankivi/Original Female Character(s), Ville Valo/Original Character(s)
Kudos: 1





	1. Don’t stop believing

**Author's Note:**

> This story begins in 1988 in Helsinki, Finland; the characters use 24-hour time, use a hell of a lot of public transportation, and listen to cassettes rather than CD's.
> 
> This was originally posted on my Mibba in 2010. I’ve included the original comments at the end of each chapter for funsies.

At nearly seven hundred hours on a Monday morning, a train from Oulu to Helsinki isn’t nearly packed - far from it. At nearly seven hundred hours on a Monday morning, a train from Oulu to Helsinki looks like a ghost town, even in the last month of summer when people living in near-Lapland would normally be using the rest of their vacation days to be visiting the shore. At nearly seven hundred on a Monday morning, a train from Oulu to Helsinki had a smattering of people in each compartment - businessmen prepared for a long trip from home to sell their earnest wares or services, clutching briefcases which were anything but and looking forlorn, and those who were expediting themselves from their home, who’s reasons varied but expressions remained the same.

I wore that expression myself, I was certain - slightly pained to be permanently abandoning my home of nineteen years, but excited and anxious to begin the next chapter of my life somewhere new, somewhere where the people didn’t have a preconceived notion of Sinikka Helle Lotjonen based solely on my crazed family.

A few waves were all I afforded my parents, who wore black on the platform as if they were in mourning, before I settled into a seat on the opposite side of the train, away from their prying glances where I could open the window and burn a pack of cigarettes or so. The quilted duffel I had clutched so gravely was slung into the seat beside me to keep any strange businessman from trapping me in the seat for the entirety of the six-hour trip. Stranger things had happened on longer train trips, and I was not willing to take the chance. A stewardess brought me an ashtray and a small glass of water; I tried to be cordial and thank her, but most people on the train looked as if they would just like to be far, far away from the strangely dressed girl.

For some reason, the polo’s, chinos and topsiders which had been the norm on a summer-long trip to Southampton were frowned upon in Finland; WASP preppy simply wasn’t coming in as well as I would have hoped. Pioneers were martyrs in their own sense of the word, and I had always just counted myself in to the former category. Besides, the thought of nasty Metallica t-shirts or Flashdance gear was enough to make me quake right down to my white Keds. Give me classic any day. The style suited the delicate Finnish features I had inherited from my mother - light grey eyes, stick-straight blond hair

A cigarette touched itself to my lips - I had packed and opened the package, selected a lucky, and pulled my hand up to my mouth with a cancer stick without even noticing. Damn. I had never intended to become addicted to nicotine, I thought, just a habitual smoker. But as time went on, I found it more and more difficult to escape my parent’s condescending notice of my habit, and now shit like this happened. I sighed as I dug for the lighter I knew I had packed in the duffel, and fired the cigarette to life, letting the smoke and tar fill my lungs.

Somewhere between Tampere and Helsinki (between an ABBA cassette and a Billy Idol cassette) I had fallen asleep, among the dour businessmen and expats smoking out their windows. I lit another fag and suppressed a sigh, noting that the train would soon pull into Helsinki Central Railway Station. I pulled the duffel bag into my lap from the seat beside me and began packing things away inside it - the walkman, the cassettes, the enormous, boring book, which was my secret sleep-inducing weapon on long trips.

The train ground slowly to a halt beside the platform; I watched as people filed out of my compartment and struggled with my extensive amount of luggage as they watched, a cigarette dangled precariously from my lips, the ash at its end growing ridiculously long.

“My little sister, smoking Marlboro’s? I thought I’d never see the day,” I spun on the spot and nearly dropped said fag down the front of my shirt as I leapt down the narrow aisle of the train toward my brother.

“Paavsi, veli!” I nearly tackled his stout frame to the ground with my embrace, both of us grinned broadly as we embraced - I kissed each of his cheeks twice and he did the same. “I’ve missed you!” He had gotten thicker, he had said something about working out to offset the effects of beer on his belly, and his usually messy brown hair had been cropped short sometime during his absence, but my brother’s soft brown eyes were still the same.

“As have I - I never thought I’d miss you growing up,” Paavo laughed, easily pulling down the two thick suitcases I had battled so violently from the overhead.

“Since when are cigarettes a sign of adulthood?” I reached over to crush the cig out in the nearest ashtray and proceeded off the train after Paavo. “So where to now?”

“The limousine, of course! Can’t you see it waiting there?”

“I’m afraid not, must be around the corner.”

“Nah, Sini, its right there, down those stairs. Biggest fucking limo I’ve ever seen - it’s so bit its segmented! It‘s got to be underground because it won‘t even fit on the fucking streets!” I laughed uproariously and reached to take the smaller piece of luggage (a duffel bag) from his straining hands to allow him to set the enormous square piece on its wheels. “Alright, let’s go.”

The Metro wasn’t as bad as everyone in Oulu had described it; even with two large bags, Paavo and I managed just fine (read: didn’t get pick pocketed or lost or stuck) and emerged on the surface in Kallio - a quaint residential district in the heart of Hel where the flat was. My new home was part of a big, Medieval-looking building, with a tall red brick facade and an intimidating iron-barred door. Paavo had once told me that it was once a warehouse, but had been reclaimed by the district a hell of a long time ago, as if the district was its own fucking entity. I laughed as I waited for him to find his keys, sparks from my lighter brought another cigarette into being - preparation for the long flight of stairs ahead. The bad thing about Hel; stairs, stairs, stairs. Not a single fucking elevator to be found!

I was barely clinging to life by the time we reached our floor - the fucking fifth floor! Five whole flights of stairs! Or was it four? I felt like I could literally reach into my chest and pull out a pair of tar-blackened lungs and probably not miss a breath.

“Maybe you should quit smoking,” Paavo quipped as he rolled my luggage to a stop in the single unclaimed bedroom - mine.

“Maybe you should quit breathing.” I shot back… actually, it was more of a wheeze, but I meant it to be a shot. My brother simply shrugged and left me to catch my breath and begin the unpacking phase. He knew how anal I was about my stuff, and therefore didn’t even ask to help for fear of being assigned the task of color-coding my underwear and sock drawer or something to that effect.

Aside from its messiness - a situation I could easily remedy in a weekend - the apartment was very nice. It had come with its furnishings, old oak pieces that gleamed as if freshly polished, which matched the worn-looking mahogany floor. Simply beautiful, I thought, as I prepared to contend with dressing the bed. Paavo hadn’t warned me it would be a fucking four-poster, and now I would have to somehow acquire hanging curtains to match the damned sheets. What am I, superwoman?

After my room was organized to perfection and the pieces of luggage slid securely beneath the bed I proceeded to the balcony, fags and a glass tumbler in hand.

“What ’cha doing?” I asked of my brother, who was reclined on the floor of the furniture-less balcony; a balcony that had a beautiful view of the Helsinki skyline.

“Relaxing.”

“Oh, yeah?” I watched as he filled his glass to the quarter mark before he slammed it back, refilled it once and repeated the motion before he filled it one last time. This drinking thing was a hassle - as soon as one thought they had a handle on how much they could actually drink, they push the bar too far. Which was why I usually preferred to watch unless the stuff actually tasted good - I hadn’t informed Paavo yet, but White Russians were about the only things I would drink.

“That’s my girl.” Paavo cuffed my shoulder as I sat beside him, taking in the view of Helsinki through the iron bars of the balcony.

“What a pretty city,” I wondered aloud, exhaling pure smoke. “But really, Paavo, three beards? Can’t you pick just one and stick to it? I’d suggest the middle one, by the way.” I swigged my drink. “If you left one of the side ones you’d just look dumb.”

“Aren’t you so fucking funny. Makes me regret the Chinese I ordered for you.” My eyes widened in surprise. Chinese food was about my favorite thing ever, it was fantastic.

“No. Chicken Lo Mein and Sweet and Sour Chicken?” Paavo grinned impishly. “And Egg Drop soup and those little baby corns?” I illustrated the size of the baby corns with the cigarette in my left hand, and Paavo burst into laughter.

“Yes!”

“My favoritest brother ever!” I exclaimed, throwing my arms around him before I propelled myself to the couch to stand watch for the delivery. Paavo’s collection of movies, stacked high in disorderly piles on either side of the television caught my eye - I carried my favorite blue and white china ashtray over and set it on the corner of the table the television was perched on and began organizing them alphabetically.

I was all the way into the P’s (deep P’s too, like Poltergeist), and quite disgusted with how many porno’s my brother owned (I sorted those separately from the rest) when a knock came at the door. I bounded to my feet, and managed to beat Paavo to the door by a nanosecond, even with a coffin nail in hand.

“Hi there,” As the door opened, I realized I was to be met with disappointment; the man at the door held a cello, not a paper bag filled with delectable Eastern goodies. I sighed. “Oh. Paavo, it’s not the food.” I deferred door handling to my brother and went back to alphabetizing, finally selecting a movie to put in as I honed in to the conversation in the background, watching the man who so resembled Barbie out of the corner of my eye.

“… and then the bitch locked me out. So I came here; everyone’s surely bar-hopping right now and could care less for me.” I suppressed a giggle - so Paavo had become boring with his old age, how funny.

“No worries, Eicca. We’ve got plenty of room here, you can have the couch.” Eyes wide and cigarette dangling, I turned. Uh, hello, what about me and my first night in Helsinki?

“Excuse me?” The look on Paavo’s face was easy to read - could I really expect him to turn away a friend in need? I sighed, pushing my hair back from my face. “Whatever, never mind.” So much for all of the heart-to-hearts I had planned. I killed the remains of my smoke as I moved to find plates for the three of us. Sulking over the blond stranger’s presence, I made my plate in silence and curled up on the balcony to eat it by myself; positioned so that I could hear the boys’ conversation over the sounds of the Big Chill, which played in the background. I had been the youngest sibling until I was fourteen, eavesdropping was my specialty.

“Who the fuck is that?” I heard Eicca (the blond, Barbie-doll looking man) ask through a thick mouthful of food. Disgusting.

“My little sister.” Paavo had let quite a pause drift between the question and the answer - presumably, he had decided to chew and swallow his food before he spoke.

“She dresses like an idiot.” I suppressed a hiss with a mouthful of Lo Mein noodles - for real? He was taking stabs at my clothes because he was insecure with his life and had to come sleep on my brother’s couch? I glanced down at my clothes - a black polo, khaki chino’s, a Kelly green ribbon as a belt and Sperry Topsider’s - definitely not as freakish as his dilapidated jean pants, which looked like they were held together by duct tape and a few remaining stitches, and his greasy t-shirt, the sleeves of which he had cut off somewhere along the line. Icky. At least Paavo still wore sleeves on his t-shirts, but I suspected if he gained any more muscle in his arms they wouldn’t fit through the holes.

“She’s got her own drummer. It’s cool, it’s a Lotjonen thing.” Paavo defended. I slurped my Lo Mein happily now, blood was thicker than water with us Lotjonens. Eicca mumbled some retort I couldn’t hear as I lit a cig, stood with my plate, and sullenly proceeded inside to sit with the boys.

What a fantastic first day.


	2. You can’t always get what you want

“Paavo! Get out of the bathroom, my hair straightener is on in there!” I pounded on the door of the only bathroom in the flat with the palm of my hand; it was nearly seven thirty of my second Monday in Helsinki, and I had orientation at eight.

“Really, Paavo, I have a bus to catch!” With a sigh, I skittered back to my room to grab a navy and gold ribbon belt to thread through the loops of my chino’s; I didn’t really want to listen to Paavo’s wordless grunts and excuses through the bathroom door about why he couldn’t go to class. “Listen veli, just because you don’t recover well from a night of drinking doesn’t mean you’re going to miss class!” I secured my favorite string of fake pearls close around my throat before I began to pound on the door again. How ridiculous.

“Paavo!”

I could have just gone to U. Hel. looking as I did, my hair was naturally straight enough except for a few stubborn little curls along my hairline, but on the first day I demanded perfection; and at that exact moment an extremely haggard-looking version of my older brother stumbled his way out of the bathroom.

“Are you going to class, Paavsi?” I managed, the toothbrush in my mouth made me sound like a retard, but I had to ask. A few passes of the flat iron and I was good to go… except I was missing my sweater. Why did I find it necessary to turn into an unorganized mess every time I find myself in a hurry? I finally found the navy blue piece and pulled it down over the light blue polo I wore; I heard my brother grunt wordlessly from the other room as I filled a pink and green travel coffee container from the kettle I had put on the stove upon waking that morning.

“I guess, it seems I must.” He emerged from his room with an over-worn Svedka Vodka t-shirt slung over his shoulder.

“Wish me luck?” I asked, securing the lid on my cup before I set it beside my book-filled tote bag that lay on the counter. Paavo shrugged and crossed the kitchen to kiss my cheek and ruffle the hair I had just worked so hard to perfect. “Aw, thanks.” Scowling, I lit a cigarette, the first one of the day.

“Good luck,” Paavo said, from where he was hunched over the kitchen sink running water over his face. “Pour me a mug of that?” He added like I was his Good Housekeeper or something; I rolled my eyes and protested, but poured it for him all the same - he had just wished me luck and was going to class, after all.

“Alright, I’m out.” I called, shouldering my bag and sipping my coffee on the way out the door.

The first time I had seen the neighborhood of the flat I had instantly realized why my parents had fallen in love with it all those years ago - when they were still single and hadn’t given birth to my most charming older brother. The old warehouse building was expansive, filled with a community of its own, and beyond that were similar buildings and cure little townhouses which I couldn’t imagine had been present when the area was industrial. Women stood together on the front porch chatting as their unruly children frolicked in the streets, which were always unusually devoid of traffic for some reason - probably because Vallila was so well serviced by the bus companies of Helsinki and the Commuter rail and the relatively new Metro lines. Quite a convenient place for businessmen who didn’t want to go through the hassle of owning a car - aka, my parents when my father worked as a drone for the Nokia Corporation. As a big-shot on the Board of Directors, my parents could afford to branch out into the more remote and quaint locations, which was why Paavo and I had lived in Oulu most of our lives.

Absently, I waved at a woman who was hanging her laundry on a line in her miniscule side yard, she waved back happily as a medium-sized mutt streaked between her legs to greet me happily.

“Hey there boy,” I scratched the top of his red head as he wagged his tail - his owner made one sharp whistle and the dog was off again. Another smile and an apologetic wave, and I continued.

It was all so deliciously quaint.

I had been sipping my coffee delicately in order to avoid scalding myself, but since that didn’t work, I began guzzling the stuff in place of smoking - which I was certain the people on the dilapidated bus with me would detest. I spent the bus ride avoiding conversation with the homeless man beside me (smelly and haggard, I assumed he must have been homeless), only to realize he was in fact a student at University of Helsinki just like myself when he got off the bus and meandered his way to class. Fan-fucking-tastic, college life consisted of ironic facial hair (Paavo’s), Barbie doll men (Eicca, the man from the night before) and homeless-looking grad students!

“Miss Lotjonen?” I was accosted upon entering the City Centre Campus’s main building by another man with ironic facial hair and - gasp! - a beanie hat pulled down to his eyebrows to avoid the cold.

“Sinikka,” I grasped his forearms in an altered, awkward version of the European greeting that he must have made up just to make me feel even more awkward about my first day at U.Hel. He introduced himself as Olli-Pekka and proceeded to tell me everything I never wanted to know about U.Hel before I even asked - he even told me which rail line I should take to the Kumpula Campus - which was nearly four kilometers away from the City Centre Campus. The conversation dragged on as he drove me the four kilos in his horrible little Saab (I clutched the door handle and my seat belt was locked for the entirety of the trip) and then abandoned me at the Faculty of Chemistry half an hour before my first class of the day without any knowledge of the building because he was actually a Mathematics student. And I was out of coffee.

So I went in search of caffeinated beverages and found that there was only one reasonably priced café across the street from the main buildings of the campus.

“Black coffee please? And can I convince you to put it in this?” The barista was quite understanding being a Law students at U.Hel herself (a totally different campus, I was told) and filled my travel mug until it was bursting. “Kiitos,honey. Thank you so much.” I handed her a few marks and left - I wandered until I found a cute little bench on the lawn of the Chemistry building and settled in to people-watch for the remaining twenty-five minutes until classes began.

The people of the Faculty of Sciences were quite diverse, I found as I observed and sipped my coffee. A cig sparked itself to life as I watched students scurry between the buildings between their classes (or during class? I wasn’t quite certain what students would be doing on campus between classes unless they had no life like me - quite a possibility). I observed everything from a redheaded woman in a lab coat running from one building to the next as if she had forgotten a) where she was or b) where she was supposed to be, to a gothic-looking tall man with shoulder-length, dyed black hair and an extremely hefty Chemistry book under one muscled arm. I even caught a glimpse of one man with a Mathematics book balanced on one arm with a sheet of paper atop it, and a Rubik’s Cube and a pen in the other hand - he was writing down algorithms to solve the cube between mixing it up and solving it himself, with perfect recall on his equations.

“This is going to be ridiculous,” I was already on my third cup of coffee and fourth fag of the day as I proceeded to class with a fresh batch of caffeinated brew. The people here were bound to be smarter than I - I had been at the top of my class back in Oulu, but that meant nothing here as U.Hel was known for taking only the best and the brightest of students into their Science programmes (plus me, apparently). There was no way in hell I could contend with the likes of lab-coat girl, shy gothic boy and Rubik’s Cube man. Shy gothic boy, who sat down two rows behind me in what could only be called a “Seminar room” just as the professor walked in, decked out in brown tweed from head to toe.

Two hours of copious notes about Organic Compounds later, I found myself being whisked away with the small group to the second period we must have shared - Lab. Classes, I found that day, were going to be a breeze - they all dealt with my major (Organic Chemistry) in one way or another, all had to do with mostly metals, although a I had one class which studied plants alone.

A week or so later I found that I had settled into (read: had been sucked into) the Chemistry department at U.Hel, the trials and tribulations barely fazed me. While most people considered me strange, I discovered that the people in my classes were downright odd. Like the man with the thick-rimmed bifocals who was fascinated by his mucus in lab class (he was constantly happily looking at his snot under the high-powered microscopes when he thought the teacher wasn’t looking) or the woman in the lab coat - who wasn’t even in a lab class this semester! I thanked God or whichever deity had kept me from being lab partners with the man obsessed with bodily fluids, and from the black-haired man. He infringed upon on my nerves with his fucking well-rounded-ness; from two stations away in Lab I could see him drawing cartoons like fucking Aunt Kylli in his notes, doodled song lyrics or poetry -I couldn’t decide which, and could solve the toughest mathematical equations without a calculator, which had been my one point of pride before he stole it away from me. He was cute, too; obviously, he worked out and dyed his hair, and I absently found myself wondering if he had a cute boyfriend as well.

With a sigh, I collapsed into the same bench on the lawn as I had on that first day, pink and green coffee mug and smoke in hand, my canvas tote in the center of the bench. Finally I had finished the last class of the week - Analytical Chemistry 102 - and it was twenty until seven hundred hours, but I just couldn’t force myself to get back on the Metro and go back to the apartment to face yet another boring weekend at home enduring Paavo’s cello practice regimen. I had planned to have all kinds of fun with my brother - the heart-to-hearts I had planned where he would reveal to me that I was his favorite person in the world and that the songs he wrote for cello were for me and his anonymous gorgeous model girlfriend whom I had yet to snag him - and all of it had gone down the drain because he had to practice constantly in order to stay afloat at Sibelius Academy and I had boatloads of homework every night in order to keep up with the pace of U.Hel’s Faculty of Chemistry.

I felt someone sit next to me, but my head was leaned back and my eyes were closed into the glorious summer sunlight (which was about to go behind a bank of clouds for the entirety of Autumn and Winter and only emerge again in mid-April or even May!) as I took periodic drags of my cigarette, so I didn’t say anything. Really, if the campus had been more closed, I would have had a towel out and a bathing suit on in order to go sunbathing and cause some ruckus among the geeks at the Faculty, but it was not to be so.

“Hey,” My eye snapped open and I found myself sitting bolt upright and regarding the man beside me with a look of horror. The black-haired man himself sat beside me on the bench - I suddenly felt very small because of his Paul Bunyan-esque size and found myself wondering weather he had a giant blue ox like in the American Fairy Tale.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” He had obviously read the alarm on my face and therefore moved backwards a few inches as I took a draught of my coffee and a breath of my smoke in an attempt to calm my gasping heart. “I just haven’t ever seen you here this late, and I was wondering if you hadn’t any plans for the weekend?” Linnankivi’s (I only knew his last name, as our surnames were what the teachers referred to us as) voice was a face-melting bass, and it flowed peculiarly from one word to the next in a very musical manner. I hadn’t known because he didn’t speak much in class; it seemed that he already knew all the answers to any question he might have asked, a stark contrast to the interview and debate I had a habit of instigating after every class.

“Oh, no, I just didn’t expect conversation. I thought for certain that you were Hesso and were content to sit beside me and inspect your mucus.” I finished the last of my coffee and stashed the cup away as Linnankivi laughed uproariously. “I’m sorry, that was cruel wasn’t it?”

“No, well yes, but it was funny as fucking perkele!” His full-bodied laughs were contagious and before I knew it, I was giggling along with him at my own joke, something I never ever did. “I’m Jyrki, by the way. I never did catch your first name, Lotjonen.” His smile was broad and charismatic, and those ice blue eyes melted the frostiness I had been clinging to desperately.

“Sinikka Helle Lotjonen, at your service.” We leaned over my canvas bag for the traditional greeting of friends - air kisses to each cheek and a good ole hug. Normally, I was a lone wolf kind of person, but in Oulu I had always had my family to make up for not having friends - here I didn’t have much of that. I guess if fucking booger man had been Jyrki, I would have talked to him just as cordially. The thought made me laugh inwardly.

“Sin Hell, good old English meanings,” Jyrki’s icy blues crinkled at the corners as he laughed.

“Oh, don’t give me that line, it’s the worst! Finns all think they’re so clever because they know the words ‘sin’ and ‘hell’ in English. Give me a break!” I laughed, and glanced at my watch. “Oh, shoot, I have a train to catch!” I shouldered my bag and stood, and noticed Jyrki’s sad look. “Walk with me?” He brightened and stood, and I found I almost had to jog to keep up with his long-legged strides.

“Going to Vallila, are you?” I nodded dumbly in reply, adding a stupid question of how he knew. “Last train out there is at seventeen hundred. I’ve had to catch it once - for an entire semester, I had to leave my last class five minutes early.”

“Lord, that’s horrible!” Nervously, I adjusted the navy blue headband that simultaneously held my hair out of my face and matched my high-waisted, navy and light blue plaid pleated skirt. I realized I looked like a Catholic schoolgirl from the ‘50s with my white polo and saddle shoes, probably the only reason Jyrki was talking to me. Guys dug the whole schoolgirl fantasy.

“What are you doing at around twenty hundred hours tonight?” Jyrki flashed a lopsided grin at the professor in tweed who rushed across campus before us as we drew level with the train stop.

“Absolutely nothing,” I sighed.

“Good! Come to my apartment and hang out with us - we’re going to Tavastia tonight.”

“And I’m supposed to get to your flat on my own dime? Will you buy me a drink for my troubles?” I asked impishly as Jyrki pulled a blue pen from his pocket and began to scrawl his address across my arm in the most beautiful cursive I had ever seen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title credit; The Rolling Stones.
> 
> Finnish-to-English;  
> kiitos - thank you.  
> perkele - hell


	3. Voulez-vous

When I finally got back home I was a whirlwind of excitement and dread - what in hell or on earth was I supposed to wear in which I could go barhopping? I was certain that a group of black-wearing guys (which was what Jyrki was and who I was sure he hung out with) wouldn’t want a little preppy girl tagging along, so I had to tailor my look to them out of common courtesy and in interest of actually gaining friends. As I stared at my wardrobe with a cigarette in hand, I realized that saying was easier than doing. I had virtually nothing that fit together to form a relatively dark outfit - go fucking figure. Paavo stuck his head in the doorway now and again as I pondered my choices, he had quickly realized that the couch was much safer than my doorframe.

“What the hell are you doing?” He called from a safe distance, he craned his neck to be able to see me from the couch, a bottle of beer in hand. I had realized that my brother was an opportunistic drinker, he had no discretion as to what, where and when.

“Going out.” I replied curtly, as I finally decided a black skirt was the closest thing I was going to get to gothic. While it was still pleated, it was a solid color (not plaid or Kelly green) not too long or too short (it COULD be considered a miniskirt, but that was a problem easily fixed) and definitely not too school girlish, so I set my choice on my bed and began to plan my outfit around it. After a moment of consideration, I pulled a Kelley green polo, a black cardigan and a hot pink belt from the closet and set them up mannequin-style on my bed. Really, I had no color diversity and needed to go shopping in a bad way; Green and Pink were definitely the most dominant colors in my closet. How sad.

“With whom?” My brother’s head reappeared in the doorway, and I chucked a ratty tennis shoe at his face. I missed of course, but it was the message that mattered and not the accuracy of my softball arm. He retreated again and left me to my own fashion devices. Tights joined the ensemble, as it would probably get cold later that evening; for the next half an hour, I rifled through my closet - things ended up in corners of the room I hadn’t even known existed (apparently the rooms in the flat were octagons, there must have been eight fucking corners in my bedroom!), ensembles appeared in color combinations I hadn’t even known existed before in my little world of pink and green. Finally, though, I stood back and lit a new cancer stick as I considered my last two options - an electric blue polo with a bright yellow belt along with the basic black pieces or the ink and green.

With a sigh, I began to pick up my room as I thought.

“With whom?” Paavo asked again, his stocky frame took up the entire doorway width-wise (maybe too much beer?) as he pried. I attempted to pay him no mind as I returned a lost pair of Capri’s to their home, folded on a closet shelf with their brethren.

“People from school,” I finally conceded defeat when Paavo asked again from his perch on my bed. Exasperated, I stuck my smoke in my mouth to avoid spouting any more information on the evening as I folded the rest of the “bottoms” I had strewn across the room.

“Am I invited?” Paavo watched me like a hawk watches a delicious-looking morsel of a toy-sized dog which has been left unattended in someone’s backyard.

“No, I don’t think so.” I shrugged and moved to my makeup box to “do my face” - mainly put on mascara and a touch of brown eye shadow to emphasize the nondescript gray peepers, as makeup was so not my thing. Maybe if Paavo had wanted to be able to dictate whom I went out with he should have taken me out once himself over the past three weeks! The private smile had turned into a scowl as I ashed my cigarette.

“You’re going out with strangers, alone, on a Thursday night? Vittu, Sini, that’s such a bad idea!” Paavo had a white-knuckle grip on the doorframe, any more pressure and he probably would shatter the doorjamb.

“Yes. Perhaps you should have thought about that before you left me to my own devices for fun, veli.” I said sweetly as I began to make shooing motions with my hands. “Unless you want to watch me get dressed I suggest you fly the coop.” I commented as I moved to the bed - the blue/yellow option had been hung back in the closet where it belonged, as I hadn’t wanted to blind anyone that evening. Infuriating my brother had been my favorite sport back in Oulu as the youngest sibling (until I was fourteen, but that‘s another story), and since I had been living with him again I realized why it was so much fun - he was too easily stressed over stupid things. Now I stressed over that which needed it - homework, school, clothing - he stressed over stuff like cello tuning, where the next round of drinks came from, and me.

Once dressed, I emerged from my room to find Paavo slung over the back of the couch like a blanket, his legs dangled over the back, his head and arms over the front. I sparked a fag into life as I stuffed my bra with a few markku and my identification card - all I would need for the night - and began to transfer the gorgeous cursive on my arm onto a scrap of paper.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“Merely storing my possessions for the long night ahead.” I shrugged, and began to wash my arm as I had memorized the address simply because it had been on my body for a few hours. I dropped the paper with the address onto Paavo’s chest. “Here you are, drama queen. That’s Jyrki’s apartment’s address - I think I can find it on my own because I’m a big girl.” I tied my black Converse (the only pair of the type I owned, and they looked like new because I never wore them) against the back of the couch. “We’re going to be at Tavastia, I think. I’ll call if we get too far off the beaten path.” I swear, it was like living with my parents again. “Don’t expect this again,” I grabbed my smokes and the house key I had on a little ribbon as to hang it around my neck - no pockets were only a slight inconvenience. “If you don’t take me out yourself, you’re going to have to deal with not knowing where I am, got it?”

When I finally reached the bottom floor of the apartments, I set off toward the rail stop, into the west where the sun had set an hour past. Ah, nightlife, my favorite. My tennis shoes made little noise on the pavement as I passed people having dinner in their houses and lit a cigarette to take the edge off my hunger - I definitely should have eaten, but that was another matter altogether. Just minutes after boarding the rail line, I was in Kallio, the “bohemian” district in which Jyrki lived which was riddled with graffiti and sex shops. I was able to follow the brief directions Jyrki had been able to give me through the closing doors of the metro earlier that day, and eventually found myself staring up at the tall towers of the restored warehouse. The building was huge - maybe Jyrki really was Paul Bunyan and needed the entire place to house himself and his big blue ox. With a sigh, I crushed my fag and rang the buzzer by the iron-barred door.

“What?” The reply was harsh over the old speaker.

“It’s Sinikka, let me in?”

“Oh, right.” The door buzzed open and I set off up the stairs slowly, trying to get a feel of the building. He was on the fourth floor, an improvement from the five flights of stairs I had to walk up and down daily (which were making my legs quite toned and fit, to my eternal happiness) as most buildings in Helsinki were too old to have elevator shafts much less elevators.

Jyrki’s door was painted bright red on a floor of nondescript black doors; and I knew it was his because light and music flowed around its edges. I raised my hand to knock just as the door swung open and hurled a tornado of brown curls and tattoos at me, I could only yelp as the green-eyed superhuman force as it crashed into me in the hallway, taking both of us down to the floor.

“Holy shit, Ville!” A girl’s voice followed the natural disaster out of the apartment as strong arms grabbed my by the armpits and yanked me to my feet.

“Way to welcome her to the place, Ville,” I turned to see Jyrki had been the one to lift me up as if I was just a little teddy bear; he took my by the shoulders and led me through the door to the cough, leaving the girl to deal with tornado man. “Are you alright?” I could only look up at the huge man with a blank expression on my face, of course I wasn’t all right, I had just survived a natural disaster! There was definitely a bruise coming up on my backside, and a few more rising on my back and my neck was definitely broken, but all I could conjure to say was;

“I’m fine,” My words were breathless and I couldn’t control my eyes as they wandered from Jyrki’s face to the anxious face of the crashing man and the chiding girl beside him. I felt satisfied to know that I had been right about Jyrki’s friend’s love of dark clothes and the like, as I surveyed the room briefly I could see I was about the only person wearing color, the only exception was a blond boy wearing a white wife beater, but he was a short exception. “May I smoke in here?” I asked as I pulled the crushed box of Marlboro’s from between my breasts.

“Of course, Ville does all the time.”

“Three packs a day,” Crash sounded proud about his habit.

“Nice to see you again, Jyrki,” I said, and extracted a sadly bent cigarette from the smashed box, straightening it unconsciously before I stuck it in my mouth. Tornado already had his lighter out and burned the end for me. “Thanks,” I managed as I pulled myself up into a more comfortable sitting position.

“Sorry about that, love. This is Hanna Ylonen,” The brown-haired, hazel-eyed girl looked anxious, as if she were about ready to give me a full check up. “And that force of nature is Ville Valo, my roommate.” So he did have a cute boyfriend! I managed to suppress laughing at my own joke and greeted the pair smartly.

“I’m so sorry darling, let me make it up to you, I’ll get you a drink?” His concern made me laugh as I used Jyrki’s arm as a lever with which I pulled myself to my feet to greet these new friends - hugs and air kisses all around!

“No, I think I’ll survive for a little bit,” I thought for a second. “A slice of bread would be beautiful though!” Ville darted off. Excitable, skinny man…

“Oh Sinikka, you’re too polite. Ville’s an ass.” Hanna grinned brightly - she had retrieved a pair of drinks in brightly colored plastic cups from somewhere nearby, she handed one to Jyrki as she spoke. She pointed over to the crowd to a short, platinum blond boy. “That little tyke over there is my brother, Lauri. He likes to follow me around and get in trouble with my friends.” She sighed as she spoke, like an exasperated mother.

“How old is he?” I quirked an eyebrow as I saw the boy in the wife beater that I had noticed earlier; Hanna’s statement had sounded more like a warning.

“Sixteen.” I nodded as I understood, the short boy was otherwise known as Jailbait for most of the people in this group.

“Here’s your bread,” I took two slices of white bread from Ville’s hands and thanked him as Jyrki’s heavy hand rested on my shoulder.

“Come sweetling, let’s introduce you to the group!” He sounded excited, and I looked like a chipmunk with an entire piece of bread shoved into my mouth. Fantastic.

First, we ran (literally) into Lauri and his annoying, hyperactive friend Jussi - who was short, overly tan and brown-haired to Lauri’s blond. There were two Mikko’s, one was thin and pale with a shock of blond dreadlocks and the other short, pudgy and bald; the thin dreadlocked one was to be referred to as Linde (or blond Mikko, if Linde was too weird) in order to avoid confusion. Juha-Pekka had two names, which was extremely confusing to me - he had annoyingly long brown hair that I would have delightedly taken a pair of scissors to. Jykri nearly ran me into Barbie-Eicca from the flat and after a few awkward moments, I was forced to acknowledge him and admit that we got off to a bad start, which also stung my already bruised pride. Kirsi was the only other girl in the group aside from Hanna, and the redhead didn’t come off as very hospitable to the presence of another woman. Joni and Pekka were a pair of twins, which was even more confusing, with blond hair and dark brown eyes. The last person Jyrki introduced me to before he allowed me to go get a drink was Aatu, who looked wise beyond his years and had a spot of gray at the temples of his light brown hair.

Fourteen people in one apartment was a little much, so nearly as soon as I settled in, I found myself being whisked out of my seat and out of the front door by Ville and Hanna.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title credit; ABBA.
> 
> Finnish-to-English;  
> Vittu - Fuck, or a similar curse.  
> markku - marks, Finnish currency


	4. Chapter 4

After what seemed to be an endless trek, the enormous group of people, Jyrki, and I arrived at a pulsing nightclub that could have only been Tavastia. I recalled someone saying something about difficulty getting into Tavastia, but there was no cue of people in sight, just Ville and Jyrki waiting for me to finish packing my second pack of smokes of the day. Normally, I didn’t smoke quite so much, but the vodka they had force-fed me had caused a general disregard for my usual habits to set in; we had been forced to stop at an Alko on the way to the club and buy another pack of cigarettes. I hadn’t felt so bad when Ville had also bought a new pack, but currently I found myself withering beneath their expectant glares.

“What? Want one?” I offered, foolishly; Jyrki didn’t smoke that I know of, and Ville already had a Marlboro in his right hand from his back pocket stash. I had thought that I’d be able to wait outside for a minute and smoke away my current headache before the music inside would synthesize another one, but this was not to be so.

“No, but we would like to escort you in,” Ville was quite outspoken, I had noticed - he had something to say in every situation. Jyrki was often silent, and nodded in agreement with Ville’s statement.

“You know, I can walk in by myself…” I suggested, as Ville threw his gangly, tattooed right arm over my shoulder and Jyrki snaked his muscular bicep around my slight waist. Both men were tall enough to exchange a glance over my head, and they exploited their advantage over me.

“Nope, not without us. Bad idea.” I nodded at Ville as I breathed in more smoke, blinking rapidly to allow my eyes to adjust.

Fuck, and I thought it was dark outside! Twenty-two hundred hours, and not a moon or star in sight on the streets was nothing compared to the pitch interior of Tavastia - I swear, the walls must have been painted a color designed to eliminate light rather than reflect it. My blindness was obviously the reason Jyrki and Ville had to lead me in to the club; absently, I wondered what happened to those who had memorized the layout of the place by necessity when someone moved the tables? The thought made me giggle.

“What’s so funny?” Jyrki’s deep bass asked from my right, and I felt Ville sneak away without a word, obviously off to find Hanna. I could feel a band playing somewhere in the club, but it must have been in the back room or something.

“Just wondering about how fucking dark it is in here!” I gasped in pain as my hip smashed into something solid - the edge of a table or something. “What the fuck!” Jyrki’s other arm encircled me as I expressed my disgust; I nearly lost my smoke.

“Are you ok, darling?”

“We may have to amputate. Get me to a table, stat.” Eyes watering, Jyrki led me to a table, ordered a Tequila Sunrise for himself, and courteously asked for a White Russian on my behalf. I rubbed my hip as I realized I was sitting between Barbie doll and Jyrki in a circular booth.

“Oh, hei Eicca,” For the second time that night, I was being stared down, so I leaned on Jyrki’s shoulder and smoked a new fag in silence until my eyes adjusted to the rest of the table. None of the other girls were present - Hanna had Ville by the hair somewhere, I was certain, and Kirsi was… odd. Lauri was absent, but Jussi was throwing back shots of tequila like a professional, with a mountain of salt on the webbing between his thumb and forefinger and a lime waiting on a nearby napkin. Perhaps, I mused, Lauri was vomiting in the bathrooms if he had been trying to keep up with the spiky-haired, overly tan boy. A drink was placed in front of me as I reveled.

“Kiitos.” The woman who served us was gone before I could thank her, so instead I thanked Jyrki and finished my cigarette before I began on my drink. He was deep into his Sunrise before I began the small talk.

“Where are you from?” I asked Jyrki, as I sparked a cancer stick into life. His enormous hand reached out and took the thing from me, laying it in the ashtray on the bar as he answered.

“Born and raised here. I know my way around.” He smiled before he lifted his glass to his lips, taking from it a long draught that emptied it entirely. I quirked an eyebrow; so far in my travels in this city I hadn’t met a true native. I said so, which caused Jyrki to chuckle.

“Well, Valo’s one. Blond Mikko is too. Technically Lauri is,” He let his sentence drag as he peered over his shoulder intently. I followed his gaze to Linde (blond Mikko), dancing with a woman who I had not been introduced to at Jyrki’s apartment.

“Who’s that?” I drained my own glass and set it beside Jyrki’s before I ashed my cigarette into the nearest butt-filed ashtray.

“That’s Manna, the love of his life.” Jyrki’s tone changed to imitate Linde’s lighter voice, and I laughed as Hanna jogged up to snatch the fag from my lips.

“Thanks!” She breathed deeply as if smoke would help her catch her breath better than air would.

“I would have given you a new one,” I called over the loud music.

“No, it’s ok, I only need half!”

“Convenient.” I grumbled under my breath, retrieving another cigarette to light.

“Come dance with me, honey!” Hanna was tugging on my cardigan’s shoulder, her arm somehow contorted to go behind Jyrki’s head to reach it.

“I’m afraid I’m not drunk enough…” I trailed off, as the serving woman brought another White Russian. Hanna raised an eyebrow, and tipped the glass to my lips to help me chug it. I would be feeling tonight tomorrow, I thought as the Greygoose, Kahlua and Bailey’s slid down into my stomach, it was a damned good thing I didn’t have class.

“Ok,” I gasped, shooing Jyrki out of the way with my cig. “Let’s do this!” I found myself out on the floor with Hanna, Kirsi and the girl Manna with another drink - straight vodka, this time - and a cigarette in hand, having the time of my life. Manna and Kirsi nursed beers of differing brands, but Hanna and I were drinking straight vodka, and thus were having the time of our lives. It was quite a while before either of us thought of returning to the table, but the incessant need to pee broke my dancing concentration after the nameless band had played out their set.

Hanna and I hit the bathrooms before we went back to the table, falling all over each other and everyone around us.

“Oops, I’m sorry babe,” I apologized to an angry-looking man in grey trouser pants who I had knocked into, and clutched Hanna’s less sober arm tight. “You need to be more careful,” I slurred.

“That soooo wasn’t my fault, honey bunch,”

“Was too!” I countered, and the giggle fit ensued. The sober part of my brain was taking mental snapshots of just how dumb I get when I’m drunk, as the inebriated part attempted to guide me toward the table where Ville and Jyrki sat alone, laughing to one another over their never-ending drink glasses. Ruefully, I wished that I could have one of those bottomless glasses; I was damned thirsty. As Hanna sat beside Ville, I lit a smoke and squeezed my way in beside Jyrki - taking what little of the seat his massiveness didn’t take up.

“Scooch over!” I took his Tequila and drained the remaining liquid in one fell swoop, noting that Jyrki looked at me with a raised eyebrow.

“First you want me to move, then you want to drink everything on the table, darling?” He ordered another Sunrise and a Russian for me, as if he could see how thirsty I was; Ville was shielding his Jack and Coke from Hanna and me as if it was a child we might molest.

“You know, I think we might want to find the rest of the group and get going, it‘s nearly four.” How Ville always managed to know the time without a watch I’d never figure out, but he was right, and if Hanna and I were to get any more inebriated we would have to be carried all the way back to Jyrki’s apartment. Yes, it was much better to go back and drink ourselves into a stupor at Jyrki and Ville’s flat.

“Can we stop at an Alko?” Hanna asked, I nodded my agreement (or thought I nodded, I might have actually just sat there or my forehead might have smacked down on the table, I won’t ever know).

“Let’s?”

“Whatever would you need at an Alko?” Jyrki asked, as Ville shimmied his way out of the booth past Hanna, leaving the black-haired man to entertain the drunken duo Hanna and I had become in the few hours we had been out. The server slipped a short glass of vodka in front of Hanna, a Tequila Sunrise in front of Jyrki and placed my White Russian in my outstretched hand - a drink which I slammed and set delicately back on the tray (I thought it was delicately placed, Jyrki later informed me I nearly knocked the poor waif of a waitress over with my drunken force).

“Booze,” I finally answered, of maybe it was Hanna who answered?

“Yeah, let’s take them home.” Ville suggested, waving for the tab.

“Good idea.”

“Aw, but why schnuggums, I never make you leave a bar before it closes!” Hanna complained, hanging on Ville as the boys half-led half-carried us from the most legendary Tavastia. Jyrki did let us stop at a liquor shop, but only Hanna was allowed to buy booze because I was simply too drunk to carry a glass bottle. Which was ok because I was able to get cigs and hand Hanna the remains of my marks to buy a large bottle of Jack Daniel‘s. Hell, I didn’t drink very often at all, why not live it up while I could? That and I was destined for a hangover the next morning, what was a little more?

A new cigarette and Jyrki’s firm grip were all that kept me moving toward Jyrki and Ville’s flat - oh, and the thought of more alcohol, probably. What was said between Alko and the flat became a blur of cutesy lover’s talk between Hanna and Ville, and awkward school-based conversation between Jyrki and I.

Finally, we burst into the apartment’s front door.

“Home, sweet home,” Ville threw himself on the couch and lit a new cigarette from the dying butt of another as I followed Hanna (and her bottle of Jack) into the kitchen where she retrieved two brightly-colored plastic cups from a cabinet.

“One for you, one for me. One for Jyrki and one for Ville,” Hanna handed me my generously-filled glass and the one she had designated for Jyrki and sent me on my way - I walked the short distance between the kitchen and the armchair Jyrki sat in very slowly and carefully as to not drop a spill… ahem, spill a drop. I did almost manage to spill the entire thing over Jyrki’s lap as I handed it to him - he took one delicate sniff of the liquid.

“Straight Jack? Are you trying to kill me?” I must have nodded happily for the look he gave me.

… and there the memories cut out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title credit; Quiet Riot
> 
> Finnish-to-English;  
> hei - … duh?  
> kiitos - thanks
> 
> …I’m running out of alternate words for cigarette, got any?  
> Thank you to my lone subscriber; you keep me going love. <3


	5. Back in black

With a start, I awoke to find myself in a strange bed, in a strange room, missing my usual clothing. Uh, great. I hadn’t realized I was actually drunk enough to sleep with someone… I realized with relief that my underwear and tights were still on - though the tights were ripped so heavily from my misguided walk that I definitely looked the part of a woman of the evening - like they were some sort of chastity belt. They might not have been made of steel, but they were good enough for me. My head felt like it had been split in two by a large man wielding an axe, and my stomach heaved like it wanted to make a break for freedom out of my esophagus, but before I could go anywhere - even to the bathroom! - it was necessary to find some sort of breast-covering-apparatus, which apparently did not include my missing clothing. Where the hell had my polo gone? The cardigan I had been wearing? Skirt? Shoes? Something?

I wrapped the comforter of the bed around my shoulders and trailed my way over to the closet - only leather jackets and trench coats there, I was obviously in Jyrki’s room and it was obvious that he didn’t hang his shirts up in the closet like normal people did. I went to the nearest possible source of a t-shirt, the imposing armoire which was the only piece of furniture in Jyrki’s room aside form a nightstand and (obviously) the bed. I steeled myself to what I might find in his armoire and pulled open a random drawer in the middle.

Bingo! Oversized t-shirts in shades of black on the first try! I brimmed with pride as I pulled one over my head and shut the drawer; before I left the room I made the bed and tossed his dirty laundry in the corner (I was actually looking for my cigarettes, but couldn’t find them).

“Hello, hot coffee,” I followed the scent trail down the long hallway to the familiar kitchen. Hanna sat slumped at the “bar” area of the kitchen, balanced precariously on a tall stool; Jyrki stood in the middle of the kitchen in a robe and a pair of thick woolen socks, a spatula in hand. I barely suppressed a gag at the smell of egg.

“Bathroom’s back down that hall, love.” Always helpful, Jyrki brandished the bacon grease-covered spatula; I turned tail and fled from the sickening smell.

After a good half-hour of prayer to the gods of porcelain, I was finally able to stumble down to the kitchen. Hanna had been replaced by Ville - I could only speculate that she had her face buried in another bathroom or had fallen asleep again, she had been more drunk than I the previous night. Ville produced a nearly-smashed pack of Marlboro’s from his pocket.

“Mine?” Man, I sounded husky - and apparently wasn’t capable of forming sentences so quickly after violently ejecting my intestines.

“I saved these from you last night, you got a little too rough with them,” He explained. I was all too happy to snatch them from his hand and collapse into a small ball on the floor with a new cigarette.

“Want something to eat?” I looked up at Jyrki with a look that I hoped clearly stated coffee and smokes were all I could handle. It occurred to me that although he was very cordial and I felt like their friend, I didn’t know the three people in the apartment very well at all. I felt that I knew Jyrki least of all, actually - Ville wasn’t very difficult to figure out, Hanna was a sweetie, but Jyrki was just so damned mysterious. It felt like I was less his friend than someone who had simply been swept up in his gravitational pull, and then captivated by the pulls of the other two like a rogue asteroid turned slowly into a moon over eons.

Only it had taken one night to be captivated by the three.

“Where’re my clothes?” I asked as quietly as I could. My question was bet with loud laughter from Jyrki and Ville both; Hanna shushed them as she entered the kitchen, clutching her head as if her hand were the only thing holding it on her shoulders.

“You yakked on them.” Oh, the ever-eloquent Hanna.

“They’re currently on an adventure in the land of our wash machine, sweetling.” Jyrki supplied, handing me a cup of black coffee as he spoke. I accepted the cup with my thanks.

“Good to know.” I realized with a start that I clutched my head much like Hanna had. With a sigh, I took a sip of the coffee - which sent me sprinting down the hallway once more, swearing to myself that I’d never, ever, ever drink again.

How the hell could I have let myself do this to myself? I was a fucking Organic Chemistry student at the exclusive Faculty of Science at the University of Helsinki. Good God, I could understand and apply the Quantum fucking field theory (on a day when I didn’t have my head shoved down the u-bend of a toilet). Once again I re-emerged, determined to get something in my stomach that wouldn’t come back up - a piece of bread supplied by Jyrki (still wearing a robe and woolen socks at eleven hundred hours) stayed in my stomach, only after that did I attempt more coffee and a fag.

“I feel like shit,” I mumbled, staring at the mug of coffee in front of my nose; I had curled up into a little ball and rested my head on the cool tile of the kitchen floor, the coffee and an ashtray rested close by.

“As you should. You and Hanna both.” Ville shrugged, downing his second cup of coffee of the evening. I reached out to ash my cigarette and nearly dropped it. Shaking.

“Yeah, you two would have had that whole bottle of Jack straight if Ville and I hadn’t stopped you.” Jyrki was staying quite far away from my position on the ground, leaving me to wonder exactly what (if anything) he wore underneath that pink-tinted robe.

“Well thanks,” Hanna mumbled into her own coffee.

“I agree.” A thought hit me - Paavo! He was probably worried sick! “Have you… er… had any visitors?” I asked, sitting up only to take a few quick mouthfuls of coffee.

“What?”

“Oh God, my brother’s going to kill me,” Well, if he had really wanted to find me, he could have come to the apartment in person; apparently he didn’t miss me too much. The two coherent people gave me odd looks - wondering how old (or young) I really was, perhaps? Hanna just laughed. After a few moments of consideration, though, I decided I didn’t care any more, my brother’s awareness of my whereabouts simply wasn’t important. There was something more important on my mind.

“Got any good movies?” God, my priorities were screwed the fuck up.

“Come on, let’s get you up.” Jyrki helped me to my feet and we relocated to the nearby living room where movies were in enormous piles. I lit up, feeling a little bit better.

“Do you have The Lost Boys?”

“Do I have the - is that even a valid question, look at me!” He handed me the case from the atop the television and pressed rewind on the VHS player. “I’ll just be a minute, gotta get out of these socks.”

Jyrki returned dressed in a pair of jeans and a (very appropriate, I thought) Lost Boys t-shirt; Ville was in tow. They sat on either side of the couch, leaving me to curl up into the dress of a t-shirt I was wearing as they engrossed themselves in conversation about the movie over my head. There was no room in my mind for anything except for my smoke, my coffee, and the damn movie they were chatting through. Finally, I cushed out my cigarette into the nearest butt-filled ashtray and laid my head back on the couch.

I woke again in that strange bed, a packet of cigarettes in one hand, Jyrki’s shirt bunched up around my neck as if I had either attempted to take it off or hang myself because of my headache… wait… what headache? What time was it, anyway? Whatever time it was, I needed to get home, which meant I definitely needed more clothes than what I was wearing. I wandered out of Jyrki’s room again as I fixed the shirt and pulled my hair up into a messy ponytail.

“My clothes?” I asked Ville - who was looking forlorn. Hanna must have gone home.

“Unfortunately, while we have a washing machine, we haven’t one of those new-fangled dryer things yet. They’re hanging on the line.” I was hit with a vision of riding the rail back to the flat in Jyrki’s dress of a Hanoi Rocks t-shirt and my torn up tights; I suddenly felt sorry for the man who I had thought homeless on the first day of classes at U. Hel, he might have simply been in a situation like mine.

“Er. I don’t have a headache any longer, but walking home in this?” The Goonies was still playing in the living room, I could see Jyrki’s black-haired head there, silhouetted against the television screen. “Neither of you would have something for me to wear?” Oh God, this was going to be ridiculous. Ville gave me one of those ‘What the hell do you expect me to do?’ looks, and I frowned deeply in response. “Aw, come on…” Puppy dog eyes did not work on the tattooed man.

“Jyrki?” I singsonged my way to the living room where he was attached to the television. “Jyrki…” His gaze didn’t disconnect even when I crawled onto the couch beside him. He was either dead or asleep, or perhaps he just didn’t care, or loved the Goonies more than life.

“Huh, what?” The black-haired man seemed to snap out of a trance, his long locks fell into those piercing blue eyes.

“Jyrki, Ville won’t give me anything to wear so I can go home,” I pouted, sounding for all the world like a sullen child. It was sort of true, though, I wasn’t used to not getting what I wanted easily. It wasn’t a spoiled rotten thing, it was a fear kind of thing.

“What do you want me to do, you’re not fitting into my pants any time soon.” He was right - I would have had to grow another foot taller. Ville, however, had a stash of Hanna’s jeans around somewhere - and if not, he wore girl’s sized jeans anyway.

“Steal me some? Or tell me where they are so I can steal them myself.”

“Uh-uh, no way, you’d die if you went into that room. It’s a black abyss of cigarette butts and beer cans, you’d get caught up in cleaning the entire thing, it would take years.” Strange how he had me pegged (correctly so) as the strange, Obsessive-Compulsive girl already. He got to his feet laboriously and disappeared.

Minutes later, he came back with a folded up pair of jeans.

“Hurry, don’t let him see you if you can help it.”

“Aw, thanks honey.” I kissed Jyrki’s cheek before I went to change. Jeans weren’t a new experience for me, but they were definitely strange in that they weren’t mine and therefore didn’t fit correctly, they weren’t khaki, and I lacked a ribbon belt with which I could hold them up. Before I left, I gave each of the men a hug, my clothes tucked in a plastic bag under my arm.

“Sinikka, why don’t you come with us tonight - Ville’s getting his sleeve finished.” I quirked an eyebrow.

“Did the group like me that much, Jyrks?” I asked, tugging Ville’s oversized pants up by the waist. Thank the Lord Paavo wouldn’t be home when I finally arrived - it was nearly fourteen hundred hours, his last class of Friday ended at sixteen hundred hours.

“I don’t give a shit, Ville and I liked you. So come, yeah?” I left with the address of a tattoo parlor scrawled on my arm in case I didn’t make it back before they were scheduled to leave at sixteen thirty - and a phone number in the off-chance that it looked like I would make it.

I arrived at the flat just in time to rip off Jyrki and Ville’s donated wardrobe and book it to the shower before Paavo was scheduled to be home; I was thankful that he hadn’t been able to catch me return to the flat wearing black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title credit; AC/DC


	6. Only the good die young

"So if you were to get a tattoo, what would you get?” Hanna asked as we boarded the Metro.

I had barely made the trio’s departure time of half past sixteen hundred hours, but was glad I had - the shop that we headed to was on the opposite side of Helsinki from where I lived in Vallila, I had a feeling that if I had attempted to find it myself I’d have been more lost than a basset hound caught in a blizzard in mid-February. Freshly showered and dressed in my usual; khaki chino’s, the bright blue polo and fluorescent yellow belt I had contemplated wearing the night prior. Sure, I didn’t really fit in with the group, especially since they were headed to a tattoo parlor, but I had gotten used to being the sore thumb over the years. At least tonight I was a sore thumb who had pockets.

“I’d finish this fucking thing. Oh wait, that’s what we’re going to do.” I actually hadn’t known that the tattoo on Ville’s arm was simply an outline of a much larger piece, and needed extensive shading before it was completed; apparently I was a dolt for thinking it looked good in the first place.

“I wasn’t asking you, kusipaa.” Hanna snapped - she still had a headache and was in a bad mood because of it. The rest of us were waiting impatiently for the painkillers I had supplied her with upon my arrival at Jyrki and Ville’s apartment to kick in and make it all better… or at least make her complain and try to bite our heads off less.

“I’ve considered getting a portrait of Elvis’ face on my backside,” Jyrki supplied helpfully, gaining a glare from Hanna. Her gaze turned to me.

“Whoa, wait, let me think about this. I’ve never really considered getting a tattoo before,” I waved my hands defensively, as if she might stab me at any given moment (and I wouldn’t put it past her not to). “Probably the equation of Heisenberg‘s Uncertainty Principle.”

“What?” Hanna and Ville both looked at me with confusion, but Jyrki grinned.

“Delta x, Delta p is greater than or equal to h over two?” I nodded in answer, grinning right along with him. As science people, the pair of us were nerds by default; at least we weren’t the kind of weirdo’s who enjoyed studying (their own) bodily fluids under microscopes.

“You’d get a fucking math equation permanently inked on your body? What?!” Hanna was indignant; apparently when she had a headache, the condition enhanced her need to know everything.

“Well what would you get, honey?” I asked sweetly, as Jyrki sniggered behind his hand. Ville simply sat, looking as if the entire conversation was beyond his capacity for patience.

“Peacock feathers.” She answered simply, as if the bright feathers male peacocks used to attract someone to sleep with them were any better than Heisenberg.

The Metro ride was mercifully short - we had arrived at the stop below the street the Tattoo Parlor was on before we even realized and narrowly escaped the departing train’s closing doors. Hanna and Ville walked in front of Jyrki and I, by Ville’s exasperated sighs I would have been willing to stake my life on the bet that Hanna was complaining.

“So what exactly do you study at the University, dear?” The question took me by surprise - I had simply thought that Jyrki and I were both Organic Chemistry students. I explained this, and gained a laugh from the tall man. “I’m actually on my final year in Analytical Chemistry. I put off my Organic Chem classes until this year because… well, it bugs me. It’s too basic.” I raised an eyebrow at this, as I stuck a cigarette in my mouth.

“What do you mean, basic? Organic Chemistry is the foundation of everything. Think we’d even have Analytical Chemistry if we didn’t have Org Chem?” It was an argument I had had many times with Chemists of different disciplines, and it wasn’t an argument which wavered either. Sound Theories were the only ones I supported, especially when it came to Science. “So you’re graduating this year?” I changed the subject gracefully, before the argument could escalate into something no one in the group would understand.

“Well, yeah, kind of. But I’m planning on completing my masters.”

“So you’ll technically graduate with me?” I laughed as I slipped an arm around his waist and tossed an imaginary hat and tassel in the air. “To the class of ‘91.”

“Like you’ll make it that far.” Jyrki’s heavy arm settled over my shoulders.

“What makes you say that?” I tried my best to sound taken aback. In reality I was slightly taken aback by his comment, even if it was in jest - did he mean to say that I was inferior to his manly skills? That was one theory I was armed and ready to disprove, a side-effect of years spent as the sore thumb in the field of Chemistry.

“With that drinking habit? How could you possibly hope to keep up? And you‘re going to have lung cancer tomorrow, I think.” Jyrki joked, squeezing my shoulder with his massive paw of a hand.

“I guess I’ll just have to survive the same way you do. How do you do it, Sir Jyrki?” I asked sarcastically as we rallied outside of an Alko along the way to the tattoo parlor.

“Cute,” Hanna pointed at Jyrki’s arm over my shoulder accusingly. Fuck, next she was going to take me home and re-dress me to her satisfaction. She was a much happier person when she had a few drinks in her.

“Oh, come off it Hanna. Have a beer and cheer up,” Jyrki snapped, his usually good nature strained to its limit; he had, of course, been with Hanna almost all day. Ville stood beside her, he looked positively beaten.

“Oh, let’s,” I smiled and ducked under Jyrki’s arm and streaked past Hanna and Ville to get into the Alko and avoid the argument I could feel in the air. Alcohol, we needed alcohol, everything was better after a few shots.

“Find me something strong,” Ville called from behind me; I nodded my understanding. He needed something strong.

For a few minutes I flitted between a rack of Absinthe and a rack of Everclear before I came to the conclusion that Ville didn’t need something quite so strong, and dove for the last handle of Captain Morgan Private Stock left on the shelf as if Ninjas were trying to beat me to it. I threw in a just-in-case pack of Marlboro reds, and glanced around like a fugitive as if Jyrki was going to swoop down and pluck the cigs from my grasp and place them back on the shelf - lung cancer my left ass cheek.

Purchases in hand, I returned to the trio who waited outside for me; Jyrki stood facing the road while Hanna’s face crinkled as if she was about to cry. Thank god I missed that row, I thought as I offered Ville the handle. He spun the cap and drank the stuff straight - must have been a bad row.

Jyrki had started walking off on his own, and I followed like a lost puppy as Hanna and Ville started to get mushy and lovey-dovey with one another. The black-haired man gripped the silver fleur-de-lis he usually wore around his neck in his palm, the cord it hung on cut into his neck; and by this, I decided to follow rather than attempt conversation - glancing back to be certain that Ville and Hanna followed us and Jyrki wasn‘t leading me on a wild goose chase through the city.

“I feel like you guys are nocturnal or something,” I began as Jyrki slowed and let his hands drop to his side.

“Oh yeah?” He was distracted, but it was my intention to distract him from whatever heinous tirade Hanna had assaulted him with. She really could be abrasive when sober - a rough lesson for me because I only knew her as drunk Hanna. “Too true, I guess.”

A moment of silence passed as Ville and Hanna disappeared into the brightly-lit shop window behind us; with a sigh, I sat down on the curb at the edge of the street and lit a new smoke. After a minute of thought, Jyrki joined me.

“Ville wants me to join a band with him,” Jyrki sighed, and reached for my cigarette as if he wanted a drag from it. I transferred the coffin nail to his outstretched hand - he held it between his fingers and stared at it through his thick curtain of black hair, but handed it back before he could touch it to his lips.

“A band? What do you play?” I asked, brows knitted as I took the cigarette back from his silver-covered hand and breathed in the sweet smoke.

“I’m a singer, darling.”

“Oh. I… I guess I had you pegged as a brooding bassist.” I grinned sheepishly at the black-haired man before I attempted to hide my giggles behind the fag in my hand. Jyrki frowned for a minute, then looked over his shoulder at the parlor behind us where Ville was just visible through the glass storefront.

“I can’t believe you’re in talks with some band and yet, you don’t have any tattoos!” I joked as I took a drag of my cigarette, trying to break the awkward silence which had spread like toxic waste in a freshwater pond. Ville had made off with my handle of Captain’s, but I rationalized that he needed it more than I and I fancied the thought of not having a hangover tomorrow.

“I try to break stereotypes,” I nearly fell off the curb laughing at the tall gothic man.

“Yeah, I like to try to break stereotypes too. Give me a break, Jyrks!” I fought off chuckles with my cigarette, lighting a new one from the cherry of the old one like a proper chain smoker.

“So why not do the band thing if you can sing?” Come to think of it, his singing voice probably wouldn’t be half bad, I thought to myself, his speaking voice was enchanting enough.

“Hanna is under the impression that Ville and I should be in a band together - and that simply won’t work.” I made a face, which forced him to answer. “Well, in case you haven’t noticed, we’re both such prima-Donnas that it will never work. And besides, who’s ever heard of a band with two singers? How the fuck would that work out?” I hazarded to guess that this was the row they had gotten into outside of the liquor store.

“Good point.” I put the cigarette in my mouth and used the free time to push my hair out of my face and rub the back of my scalp, considering a band with two singers. “Although, originality isn’t a bad thing.”

“You can be original without taking a dive from all normalcy,” Jyrki could be quite elegant when he wanted to. With a smile, I dropped my hands toward the street.

“Also a good point.”

“I mean, look at you. You’re so damned normal it hurts!”

“Hey! Shut up!” I cried, throwing a light punch at his knee. The big, black-haired man grabbed the fist and forced his fingers through it, turning a punch into holding hands. I stared down at his silver rings for a moment before I curled my fingers around his hand, wondering how on earth he had gotten so many rough calluses.

“I’m only kidding. You’re wonderfully unique, sweetling.” He flashed that winning smile of his, and I laid my head on his shoulder - which had somehow inched closer as we were chatting the time away.

“Kiitos,.” I felt a set of fingers on my chin, they gently lifted my face toward the light of the street lamp - toward his. The silence of the streets was deafening to me; perhaps he was alright with it, but there was no background noise to drown out the frantic beating of my heart, I could hear the synapses in my brain firing in too rapid a progression to allow any sort of coherent thought. The night was just cool an humid enough to make each of our breaths visible, I watched them mingle through half-lidded eyes as Jyrki’s fingers drifted down the line of my jaw to the nape of my neck. His long fingers ensnared my hair and guided my head forward to his - our faces collided before our lips, I could feel his warm skin against my cool cheek, his lips strained to meet mine. Before I could stop myself, before I could think to refuse, I pressed my lips to his for a long minute; Jyrki’s tongue teased mine, exploring somewhere around my tonsils.

And then I pulled away.

And I realized I had made a huge mistake. How long had I known Jyrki, anyway? Definitely not long enough to be skulking on street curbs making out with him. I pulled him to his feet as I stood and occupied my hands by scratching my arms nervously - to break any and all contact his body had with mine.

“Let’s go check on Ville?” I made it to the glass door of the parlor before he could protest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title credit; Billy Joel
> 
> Finnish-to-English;  
> kusipaa - directly translated as “piss-head,” generally used like “ass hole”  
> kiitos - thank you
> 
> This chapter was quite difficult for some reason. @.@ And no matter how hard I tried, it’s still crap.


	7. It’s now or never

“Aww, come on Sinikka, can’t I just come with you? Your friends didn’t mind me last time!” I glanced over my shoulder at my brother as I selected my outfit for the evening. It was a Wednesday, but since school was finally out for the summer the day of the week didn’t matter - we saw the summer as an opportunity to drink on days we normally would never dare, such as Sundays and Mondays. Wednesdays were a little less daring - but we had already gone out on Monday this week and decided to give it a break on Tuesday. I had been kind enough to allow Paavo to come drinking with the “Helsinki Vampires” Monday, and my muscular older brother had been a hit - even if he hadn’t shaved off a single one of the three beards he had been nursing since I had arrived in Helsinki last August.

“Fine. But I think it was only Kirsi who liked you,” I sniggered, stuffing a cigarette in my mouth as I reached for the only pair of “angle-stranglers,” a pair of black jeans which I had recently acquired from Hanna and incorporated into the wardrobe of polo’s and khaki I was known for. I felt guilty when I admitted (to myself) that they were actually one of my favorite pieces; the thought alone was enough to make me fold them back up and place them on the shelf with the sea of khaki and sparse sprinkling of jeans. One of these was a pair of skimpy shorts which I tossed on the bed with a pair of opaque tights.

“Sini, sisko,,” Paavo’s face appeared in my doorway as I studied the difference between two polo’s in varying shades of blue (turquoise and aquamarine, respectively) with my cigarette stuck in my mouth.

“What?” The question was places through my teeth.

“What the fuck do I wear?” I rolled my eyes at my older brother.

“If you ever ask me that question again -” I placed the turquoise polo on my bed and hung the aquamarine back in my closet. “I’ll denounce you as gay.” I threw a brown leather belt (another departure from my usual preppy style of ribbon belts) which matched the Sperry’s I meant to wear on the bed. “Just wear your usual crappy jeans and a shredded band t-shirt and those black cowboy boots you have. I like those,”

He disappeared as I began to dress for the evening. The shorts were really too short to wear without the tights without looking overly slutty, and the Sperry’s and belt barely matched one another - I was beginning to look less and less put together each time I went out with my friends, and I wasn’t sure if I liked it or could stop it from happening.

“Let’s go!” Half an hour later, I waited at the door for Paavo, who was even more fickle about his outfit than I had been. His boot steps followed me down the stairs of the apartment as I rushed to make the rail connection that would take us right to Jyrki and Ville’s apartment - I didn’t bother to put out my cigarette in the rush and was nearly ripped off the train before I could toss it out a window.

We arrived at the flat just as Manna and Linde - now an official couple - did, they held open the door for my brother and I and we raced up the stairs to the traditional pre-clubbing party together. I burst through the red door first; we were greeted by cheers and shouts. Paavo was whisked away by Kirsi before I could even think to greet her - I could see them making out in a corner of the living room. It was difficult not to be jealous of my brother, I had been waiting for something like that to happen to me for just under a year.

“Sini, love!” His lips (speak of the devil and he shall appear) touched my cheek, the pale flesh burned form the tequila he had just taken a shot of. Here we go again. I smiled as genuinely as I could and hugged Jyrki, kissing both cheeks as quickly as I could so I could get him to let me go (read: stop tempting me) and find the glass of alcohol I so desperately needed.

It had been like this between us since he had kissed me - we had both been desperately trying to act normal with the assistance of massive amounts of alcohol. My defensiveness had become a natural reaction after several months of waiting - Ville claimed that Jyrki was still interested in me, but I couldn’t help but wonder if I was still interested in him.

“Guess what Sini?” Jyrki followed me into the kitchen as I poured myself a shot of vodka. I slammed two down before I answered.

“What?” The question was more of a forced gasp as the Finlandia Vodka burned its way down my throat. I chased the shots with the fag I had balanced between my fingers.

“We’re going to the Ice Bar tonight!” Eyes widened, I glanced down at the shorts I wore, and sighed.

“Only because I’m wearing shorts, right?” I thumped him on the shoulder with my fist, pouring a glass of alcohol I could carry around with me. “May I borrow a jacket?” Jyrki’s smile spread to his ice blue eyes as his enormous hand settled on the top of my head - he mussed up my hair before he answered.

“Fine. But promise you’ll give this one back, yeah?” I could only grin impishly in reply before I darted down the hall to his bedroom - more specifically, the closet. The only jackets Jyrki owned (aside from a single, smelly, sleeveless jean jacket) were leather, long or short, with patches or plain; and he had nearly as many of them as I had polo’s. I tried a few on before I came across the one I had coveted since I saw him wearing it on campus; it had patches on the sleeves and studs on the collar just like all of his other jackets, but it was supple leather - if I wanted to, I could push the sleeves back to my elbows. It was also only a little too big for me, when I had seen Jyrki in it he had admitted to me that it was too small for him to wear much longer.

Mine now.

Jyrki wandered into his bedroom just as I was finished hanging the rest of his jackets on the line - he set his drink down on the top of the nightstand beside mine before he began rummaging through one of the drawers for a set of skeleton gloves.

“That looks nice on you, darling,” I nodded my thanks with a smoke firmly between my lips as I adjusted the jacket’s fit. “Which one should I wear?” I shot him a funny look - what was with men today? Was Ville going to come prancing in and ask me about his outfit, too? But I selected Jyrki a jacket as he changed his shirt.

“’Ere you go, Jyrks.” I supplied the jacket to him with a flourish as he yanked a t-shirt down over his head. Jyrki wasn’t jacked (like Jussi or - ick - Paavo), but there were abs somewhere beneath a light layer of padding; hell, he had nice arms, I couldn’t begrudge him anything.

“Thank you sweetling.” I smiled in reply. He reached for a black cowboy hat which had hovered in the back of his closet for as long as I had known him.

“Please don’t put that on your head…” My sentence trailed as he grabbed it by the brim - I stuck the cigarette in my mouth to prevent further comment.

“Why not? It looks damn cool.” Jyrki smashed the thing down over his long black hair, I suppressed a grimace.

“No, it doesn’t honey, please take it off.” He didn’t acquiesce my request until we were leaving for the club; he left it on the kitchen counter on the way out the door. I noted its location so that I could smash it drunkenly later.

The Ice bar was so cold that the only way to stay warm sans jacket was to dance one’s ass off - and I did so. Hanna and Kirsi were my permanent dance partners - although our trio soon became a quintet when Manna came to grind on Hanna, with Linde in tow. We danced for quite a while, an entire band finished their set and another one began but we were still going, a cigarette pressed to my lips and a tall glass of vodka balanced in my palm. I couldn’t help but spare Jyrki a glance every few songs; for a while, he sulked into his Tequila, for a while, he took shots with Jussi, for a while, he was gone, and for a while he was back on his own again. Suddenly, I found that my dancing partners had been commandeered by Paavo and Ville - Paavo held a long-necked bottle of beer in one hand and his other rested on Kirsi‘s hip. Disgusted (and also the only single lady in the group) I vacated the dance floor.

Jyrki had a White Russian waiting for me as I leaned against the frozen bar beside the tall, black-haired man. His cool blue eyes matched the ice as he smiled at me - he watched with interest as I chugged the drink and asked for a Peach Vodka on the rocks, simply because I could see the bottle behind the bartender and wasn’t feeling the coffee liqueur any longer.

“My brother is probably about the most disgusting human being on the planet right now,” I mumbled over the music, and leaned into Jyrki’s side as I shivered.

“You know, we could get you one of those lovely warm, blue parka things,” Jyrki parried, I simply laid my head on his shoulder and sucked on my cigarette for warmth. His large hand reached over to zip the jacket I wore up and then came to rest on my shoulder.

For the rest of the evening we sat (or rather, stood and danced for warmth) at the bar and chatted idly about life as we had for nearly a year. As usual, I waited for something I had been hoping would happen for nearly a year, but as usual, it never came. We didn’t leave the bar until I had enough vodka of various flavors to make me incapable of walking well - I rode piggy-back all the way back to Jyrki and Ville’s apartment.

Waking up in Jyrki’s bed - or elsewhere in Jyrki and Ville’s apartment - was nothing unusual these days, the entire group (which was collectively known as the “Helsinki Vampires,” a fond nickname from Helsinki Bartenders) could be considered alcoholics easily. Of course, a few did worse than drink, but I rarely had to witness any of the “subculture” stuff. As usual (I had developed an affinity for loosing my clothing in various ways), I grabbed one of Jyrki’s enormous t-shirts and swam through the fabric on the way to the kitchen. As usual, the abnormally tobacco-conscious Ville had salvaged my cigarettes for me, and as usual, Jyrki was in the kitchen wearing basketball shorts and a pair of thick woolen socks.

“What will it be then, Sini, coffee or these delicious sunny-side-up eggs?” My gag gave him his answer as I sat on the counter beside the deep sink and lit a cigarette. “Always the party-pooper.”

“God, I can never figure it out Jyrki, how the hell are you always sober enough to want breakfast after we drink?” He put a cup of coffee in my hands as I asked, that trademark mysterious smile crossed his lips.

“Ancient Finnish Secret. If I told you I’d have to kill you.”

“Frequent Sauna visits,” I speculated with a wry grin, downing as much of the hot black coffee as I could in one gulp. I finished the cup of coffee and my cigarette at the same time, I lit a new one as Jyrki watched - eating his eggs like a starved dog.

“Could you, maybe?” My thin arm held out the mug to him over the top of the island in the middle of the kitchen. He took it, leaving both of my hands free so I could light another cigarette.

“You know,” He poured slowly, refilling his own cup and mine in turn before he crossed the kitchen to set mine down on the stone countertop beside me. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you eat anything, do you exist on a diet of coffee and cigarettes?” I chuckled at the remark.

“Indeed I do, that and human blood. Oh, and fear, don’t forget the fear.” I smiled so that each and every one of my teeth showed.

“Oh, knock it off.” Jyrki retrieved his eggs and leaned on the countertop next to me, he offered me a strip of bacon which I took, if only to show him that I could ingest food items. Bacon and cigarette were an interesting combination. Absently (after I finished my bacon), I began to braid Jyrki’s too-long black hair, my cigarette clamped between my teeth.

“You better not light me on fire sweetling.” He quipped as I finished the braid, which hung between his shoulder blades. His hair was longer than mine. I paused to take a breath of my cigarette and then set the thing in the nearby ashtray (they were scattered all about the house because of Ville’s chain smoking).

“Your hair’s so soft, tell me, what kind of shampoo do you use?” I shot back, undoing the braid gently. Jyrki’s head turned beneath my palms as I did so, I found my hands rested on his cheeks rather than the back of his head.

“Essence of baby tears.” That smile again. I wanted to kiss that smile off his face.

It must have been the hangover; but I leaned my face down to his - I hovered above him for a moment, our breaths mixed together as his eyes slid closed. Jyrki’s enormous hands on the back of my head and neck pulled my lips to his. Most people say shit about fireworks when they talk about true love’s first (second, technically) kiss, all of that corny baloney.

I felt a burn, like tequila dancing on my tongue, only much more pleasant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title credit; Elvis Presley.
> 
> Finnish-to-English;  
> sisko - sister


	8. Summer of 69

“Where are we, Jyrki?” I asked as we got off the Metro, a smoke before we even reached the surface, the streets of Helsinki. He had called the flat early Friday morning and woken me at the ungodly hour of nine - not nine thirty, not nine hundred almost ten hundred hours, but nine. Hundred. Hours. Good lord, just because I kissed him didn’t mean he could wake me up at such an unhealthy hour on a day I didn’t have class. I wore a pair of cargo shorts - khaki, of course - and a light blue polo; a stark contrast to Jyrki’s leather pants and black t-shirt. I trailed behind the tall dark man, his hand was grasped in mine, which was the only way I could get him to walk slowly enough for my short legs to keep up with his broad strides.

“Where are we going?” I inquired again, this time angrily because he wouldn’t slow enough for me to put my fag to my lips. “Good god, slow down Jyrki! You’re practically running!” As if on cue, he took a sharp turn to the right and halted.

“Well I didn’t mean stop completely,” I breathed, looking up and down at the tall, stucco-coated façade of the building. “What is this place? Where are we? Wh -”

“You ask too many questions, sweetling.” Jyrki smashed the button on the call box by the door and kissed my forehead while we waited for the answering buzz. The voice was male, demanding to know who was at the door at such an unreasonable hour - I was more than happy to see that I wasn’t the only person who thought Jyrki was a tyrant who went about waking people too early in the morning. The long-haired man answered with his name and a grin, he held the door open for me and then passed me in order to show me the way up the stairs.

“Archie! Open the fucking door!” Jyrki’s fist pounded as I leaned against the wall, glaring at him ruefully. “You know, it’s not that early.”

“Fucking Christ Man, it’s not even noon!” Another black-haired man answered the door - if his hair hadn’t been curly and his chin cleft, I would have thought I was seeing double. “Oh, hello there sweet thing,” The man’s attention snapped to me like I was a morsel to eat. Jyrki laughed as I made a subtle grab for his hand, holding it in both of mine.

“Uh, hei,” I breathed through the cigarette clamped between my teeth.

“Oh, right - Sinikka, this is Archie. Archie, this is my girl.” I beamed up at him for a moment like an infatuated kitten before I had to free his hand in order to replace the smoke in my lungs with oxygen. “We have practice at noon - since I knew you wouldn’t be up I decided to visit. Don’t worry, we brought a movie.” Jyrki smiled so brightly it seemed Archie couldn’t help but laugh; Jyrks had that effect on people.

“Come in, come in.”

“Would it be rude if I asked if you guys have the fixings for coffee?” I stopped Archie by the arm as Jyrki laughed hysterically from the television. “You see, that man over there, he’s cruel and unusual. He woke me up and hasn’t let me had any coffee yet. I’m desperate.” Archie smiled at me, and set out the things for brewing before he left the tiny kitchen to wake his roommates. Archie’s flat was much larger than Jyrki’s or my own - but in order to have four bedrooms (the fourth person was the woman of the house and was off visiting their grandmother on holiday, I learned), the flat had to sacrifice its location and beauty, it was far away from the city center. But apparently, it cost less than the flat Paavo and I lived in - not that the price of the building mattered to us as it was a family owned apartment.

I made coffee as Jyrki settled in to watch my favorite movie - The Big Chill.

“I can’t believe you’re watching that without me,” I called through the apartment, as I fiddled with their coffee pot; I prided myself on my coffee-making skills, any pot, perfect coffee, every time. I sat with a cancers stick in my mouth, watching the pot as if it would speed up the process and wondering if I should start going through their cabinet with hope of locating mugs. After a few cabinets, I gave up and wandered to where Jyrki had thrown himself on their couch, singing along with the classics in his deep baritone.

“I know you wanna leave me, but I refuse to let you go,” Jyrki held his long arms out to me as he sang, I allowed him to enfold me in them. “Ain’t too proud to beg, sweet darling, please don‘t leave me girl,” I laughed at him, reaching up to tweak his nose none-too-gently.

“What a ham you are, honey.” I could hear the pot screeching from the kitchen (a watched pot never boils, but will do so as soon as one walks away), so with a kiss I left him on the couch. “So what exactly is going on today?” I called to him from the kitchen as I searched for mugs again.

“Archie? Why is there a girl in the kitchen making coffee?” I spun on a dime, nearly slopping the coffee in my mug all over myself - a man with shaggy black hair (did everyone in this house have black hair?) hovered in the doorway in his boxers. I quirked an eyebrow and presented him a mug of brew with a smile and a breath of smoke. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Just be glad I’m here, making coffee, yeah?” I persuaded, and took a draught of my own mug as if to prove to him that I wasn’t trying to poison him.

“Why the fuck are you here?” He was still wary of me and my cigarette… and my coffee… and probably my brightly-colored clothes and blonde hair as well. Definitely robber/serial killer material in his mind.

“I’m - ah - Hi.” I set my coffee down and removed the cigarette from my mouth. “Sinikka Lotjonen. I’m, uh, Jyrki’s girl.” To be so blunt… the shaggy man looked as if he were about to commit murder, and I understood the notion; if I had found a stranger in my kitchen upon waking at an ungodly hour, I would have been upset too. At my introduction the man seemed to relax, and actually took a long gulp of the coffee I had given him.

“That’s all well and good then. I’m Timo.”

An hour later I found myself walking through Helsinki - a bright spot in a group of five darkly-dressed young men. Jyrki hadn’t seen fit to fill me in as to the agenda for the day, so the man Pasi (Archie and Timo’s roommate) did; we were on our way to Jussi’s parent’s house, where there was a garage for practice. It explained the guitars strapped to the men’s backs as we traipsed down the street. I was eager to hear what they sounded like - but I dreaded it at the same time; what if they really, really sucked? How was I supposed to explain to Jyrki that he definitely shouldn’t quit his day job - I was of the belief that he shouldn’t quit school anyway, the black-haired man was a brilliant mind in the field of chemistry.

The boys directed me to sit on an amplifier in the corner of the little garage, I watched in wonder as they transformed the space into a place to “rock out” - if only while Jussi’s parents were at work. Really, they needed a better practice room if they planned on being a proper band. Jyrki seemed totally in his element as they set up, more so than when he was in the classroom or the labs. The tall man never ceased to amaze me.

I sat Indian-style with a pack of Reds and a pair of black sunglasses in my lap, flipping my lighter between my fingers as I waited for the boys to get their act together. They were just goofing off as far as I could tell - Pasi and Timo were having some sort of guitar face-off, Jussi was “tuning” his drum kit (as if that was possible), Archie had some funky bass line going on in the background, and Jyrki was crooning some old Elvis song at me through the microphone, intent on making me blush.

“So, uh, when does the music start?” I called over the din, ashing my cigarette into the fine china ash tray Jussi had brought out with him. Silence fell over the room, all eyes were on Jussi as he beat out some semblance of a tempo on his drum kit; to my untrained ear, it was difficult to figure out just what they were playing. The beat got my feet tapping, the guitar line sent me searching for another cigarette to light to hide my laughter. Jyrki’s singing wasn’t any better - it was something between Elvis and a man being strangled.

Couldn’t he just sing like he spoke? I sighed a breath of smoke, and clapped when the song was done more for the fact that it was over rather than it being any good at all. Before I could offer any constructive, helpful criticism, they launched into another song - but wait, there’s more… I suppressed a grimace with a breath of cancer as Jyrki sang. The next song had something to do with wanting head, and the song after that something about sex - the pair together were enough to set me scowling.

“That’s really cute, Jyrki.” I commented as he came around for a kiss between a verse and a chorus.

“What? That’s all Ville’s songs are about,” He looked confused.

“He’s a little more eloquent about it.” I snapped before I clambered off the amplifier and headed outside for a bit of fresh air. It was nearly fifteen hundred hours - Jussi’s parents would be getting off work soon and the neighbors wouldn’t be too happy about the “children” playing much past sunset. I sighed and finished my cigarette - it seemed I had been doing a lot of sighing recently, everything irked me. I needed to loosen up a bit, maybe quit drinking I mused as I crushed the burning but into the grass on the side of the small driveway.

After a short while, the music inside ceased, and I could hear sounds of the men packing up as I sparked another cigarette to life. No, I didn’t like their music, but the least I could do was to be supportive of the boys in their little task. It wasn’t like Jyrki was giving up his life for the band, so it was a tolerable side-project.

“What’s all this about?” Jyrki asked as we walked back to the rail connection which would take us to Vallila. I shot him a questioning glance as I stomped out my cigarette - holding his hand far away from my body as I danced after the butt that rolled slowly down the sidewalk away from my rubber soles. “You know what I mean, Sini,” Uh-oh. No pet name. The black-haired man was angry with me, I could tell. I grasped his hand tightly as we ascended a narrow flight of stairs.

“It’s just… I dunno. It’s not conducive to my tastes.” I answered finally as we boarded the train.

“And before - before you didn’t want to be my girl at all, you ran off for weeks after that night at the tattoo parlor. You did, don’t deny it! Just listen to me!” We were very nearly alone in the train car - Jyrki sat beside me and turned so he could meet my gray eyes with his blue. I pushed the black hair that whipped at my face over his shoulder - his hair grew like a weed and he refused to cut it no matter how hard I pleaded. His speech faded into silence.

“Well then talk,”

“The music has to speak to a much larger demographic than just my girlfriend, darling.” Jyrki sounded resigned as he pulled my hand back into his lap, entangling it with both of his. “I don’t want you to be in love with it, because I’m different on stage. I just need your support.”

How did he manage to make it sound like we were getting married or something? I turned to look out the window rather than into those icy blue eyes which begged for my forgiveness, or my blessing, but Jyrki’s long fingers brushed my jaw and turned my face to his again for a long, slow kiss. Jyrki knew that stealing smooches all day long was nothing compared to having him all to myself - he had stolen my blessing by the time we reached the flat weather I had originally been willing to give it or not (couldn’t remember that verdict at all).

Jyrki and I smashed into the apartment with all the force of an oncoming train, grinding up against countertops with the force of our kisses (in the back of my head, I thanked God that Ville and Hanna were off somewhere). But when the black-haired man began to lead me back to the bedroom by my belt loops I was forced to put a stop to his fun.

“Linnankivi,” He pulled my belt, I balked like a stubborn mule, braying his name until he stopped playing the part of a cruel farmer. “Stop it and come back to the living room,” I was about to follow my own advice when his strong hands caught me by the arms.

“Why not, love?” His lusty breath caught up in my collar to tickle my neck ruthlessly. He would be the death of me, one day.

“Because.” Stubborn child syndrome infused with a modicum of embarrassment tumbled from my lips. I felt Jyrki’s hands slide from my shoulders down my arms to hang limply at his sides - he had heard the song and dance before and knew I wasn’t to be convinced once my mind was set.

“Every single time, Sinikka. Are you afraid of me or something?” Jyrki stood in front of me now, a hand on my cheek meant to guide my gaze to meet his icy blues but I couldn’t, I let my eyes slide from his face to the floor in shame. “Sini? Kulta? Fucking look at me Sinikka and tell me what’s the matter! It’s been half a goddamn year and I’m sick and tired of you shutting me down every single time I try to bring you to my bed!”

His words hit home, striking a nerve somewhere between my eyes and my brain - the one that tends to make tears well up and makes me look like a sad little girl without fail. Not what I was going for, I didn‘t want his sympathy or to look like tears were the way out of this conversation (but that would be an added bonus); I brushed past Jyrki in vain hope of getting to the front door in time but he caught me by the wrist before I had gone two steps. His long arms enfolded me, we slid down the wall to the floor together in a heap of tangled limbs and hair, and too many choked sobs.

“Sweetling, please.” Strong fingers brushed back my hair, thumbs wiped the tears from beneath my eyes but they continued to fall - I was a goddamned waterfall that had to run its course before it would stop.

“I’m sorry Jyrki, so sorry.” I murmured, as if admitting my guilt in the matter would allow me to avoid the true reason why I wouldn’t allow him to simply whisk me away for a quick fuck. His lips touched my forehead and I sat enclosed in a curtain of his hair as I attempted to make the tears stop falling so I could speak coherently. He seemed to sense this (of course he did, Jyrki was the most sensitive man I knew aside from Ville who was borderline gay in his sensitivity) and remained silent, stroking my hair gently as if trying to soothe a spooked horse.

“Jyrki?” I paused, and dug my teeth into my bottom lip as I looked up at him, unsure of how to handle myself. It was a small secret - not exactly a dirty one, but a secret nonetheless - something I had kept to myself for a long, long time.

“Yes?” His hands slid to hold me by the cheeks so I could more easily gaze into his eyes - because that was exactlywhat I wanted to do at that moment…

“The reason I won’t - oh, God I’m so embarrassed.” Where was a goddamned cigarette when I needed one? How else was I supposed to pull off pregnant pauses while I searched for the right thing to say if I wasn’t fixating my necessity for nicotine? “Jyrki, I’m a virgin.”

For a moment, it looked as if the weight of the world had just been lifted off the black-haired man’s shoulders, his concerned frown turned into a bright smile and to my utter horror, he threw back his mane of hair and laughed. It was almost enough to start my tears again, so instead I buried my face in his chest. How could he be laughing at this - at me?

“That’s all, kultaseni? Good God, I thought you were going to tell me you had the Herpes or was using me as a cover-up for your lesbian lover, Sini. This is your bloody big secret?” His arms wrapped tightly around me, like a boa constrictor ensnaring its prey as he chuckled to himself, his chin rested on the back of my head as he spoke. “I’m sorry Sinikka, but you’ve taken this huge load off my back. I can’t believe you didn’t just tell me right off. Did you think I was going to break up with you?” I didn’t nod, but that was exactly what I had thought. Virginity was such a rare thing, I was an endangered species; but god, at twenty years old I either was destined to be a cat lady or a nun or both at the same time.

“It’s embarrassing.”

“No it’s not honey, you should be proud of yourself. Are you waiting until you’re married, like a good little Catholic girl?” I shook my head. “No? Well then -”

“It was never the right moment.” I cut him off before he could denounce himself as disgusting or worse, I would not let my gorgeous Jyrki-baby do that. Slowly, I wrapped my arms around his waist, I didn’t need to see his face to know he was plotting something.

“If I make the perfect moment, then would you?” I paused before I answered (cigarette! get me a cigarette!), entwining my fingers behind his back carefully.

“I can’t make any promises.”

“Emphasis on the perfect?”

“Emphasis on the not corny?” I giggled, and burrowed my face into the gap between his chin and collarbone.

“I just want you to be comfortable.” His hands entwined themselves in my hair once more, and he relaxed in my arms as I lay atop him.

“You just want to have sex after half a year of waiting.”

“I’m a man, what do you expect! But in my own defense, it has been longer than that.”

“Well then what’s a few more years?” I laughed uproariously as I watched his face drop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title credit; Bryan Adams.
> 
> Finnish-to-English;  
> kulta - darling  
> kultaseni - sweetheart


	9. Dance tonight

Daylight was fading on the cold November evening, and no-one had called me to ask what we were doing for the evening yet. It was a Friday in the middle of my third semester of College (dead center, Jyrki had said), and to not go out on a Friday night was unheard of. I grabbed the phone off the cradle and dialed Hanna’s house number.

“Hey honey, how are you?” I asked after she answered.

“I was just getting ready to go meet Ville at the tattoo shop.” I winced. It was about time the man had enough money to finish that fucking sleeve (and he claimed he had enough to do that and then some - the man had some unusual ideas about what he was willing to permanently ink into his skin forever), it had been two years in the making.

“Good God, I haven’t been able to reach either of them at all. Am I invited, or am I to rot in the house all night - on a Friday!” It was more of an accusation than a question - was Hanna really going to leave me to my own devices? “Why aren’t they answering, by the way?”

“Well, I’d suppose Ville’s already on his way to the shop. Jyrki wanted to stay inside all night and work on a paper…” She drifted off - I didn’t need to be able to see her expression to know what she was thinking.

“Intervention?” I felt my impish grin spread.

“Let’s. Be there in thirty minutes, I‘ll bring the Jack.”

“Coke and Cigarettes. Gotcha.” I hung up and instantly became a whirlwind of disorganization - every one of my perfectly color-coordinated or alphabetized drawers became a tangled mess as soon as I opened. Why oh why hadn’t I asked for forty-five minutes, an hour perhaps? Half an hour wasn’t enough time for a girl to get ready to go out, ride the metro, pick up ingredients for mixed drinks and cigarettes and show up on time for a homework intervention (a weapon Jyrki had invented to get me out on the town when I had papers to finish and chapters to read, a weapon I was more than happy to turn on the boy).

I donned a pair of “toothpick” jeans, a bright red polo and white accents; a smoke sent me flying out the door in a huff of lateness. Where the hell did Hanna live that she could even get to Jyrki’s in under a half an hour, anyway?

As it were, I was hard-pressed to make it to the flat on time, clutching a brown bag to my chest with a cigarette in my mouth. It was fucking snowing again - I hadn’t thought I would need a scarf or a hat until I had reached the last flight of stairs in my own apartment building, the snow on a window ledge had sent me sprinting for Jyrki’s leather jacket to toss over the light cardigan I had chosen and a white, fluffy scarf. I was incredibly thankful for these items as I waited for Hanna. Even though I was native to Oulu - where it was much colder than Helsinki on a regular basis - I was strangely intolerant of any and all cold weather, a strange trait for any Finn. Hanna was nearly fifteen minutes late - fifteen minutes I waited in the freezing cold before I could buzz up to Jyrki.

“Hey kulta, it’s me. Let me in, it‘s freezing.” The door buzzed open. Hanna darted ahead of me with reckless abandon and an impish grin as she clutched the alcohol to her chest. I followed with my brown bag and cigarette; I took her on the inside corner of the second flight of stairs and she couldn’t rival my superior stair-climbing skills and so I made it to the apartment door before her. I turned the handle -

And immediately tried to shield Hanna’s eyes from the disaster that was Jyrki Linnankivi - standing in a pair of black briefs, thick woolen socks and a scarf (what was wrong with the man - if one is cold, don a jacket, not a damned scarf). Instead of shielding Hanna, I clothes-lined the slip of a girl with my arm and sent her sprawling cartoon-style on her back; she clutched her Jack like a champion, that bottle would never break while in Hanna’s possession, that much was apparent.

“Jyrki! My God!” He had disappeared into his bedroom when Hanna’s presence became apparent. My arm-blocking skills, however, had kept his scarf-underwear-sock wearing a secret from her. “Get dressed, we’re taking you out!” I helped my incapacitated friend to her feet - and in thanks, she made off with the paper bag of coke and began mixing drinks in the kitchen. I wandered back to Jyrki’s bedroom.

“Jyrks, honey?” I thought it prudent to knock before I let myself into his bedroom, just in case he had found some more obscure outfit to put on to replace his prior combination (maybe a leather nurse dress or lingerie or something equally awkward) - I was relieved to find he had made the addition of a pair of jeans and a t-shirt to the scarf and underwear and lost his woolies somewhere in the mess of his room.

“I didn’t think you had brought company, Sini, it’s nice to let a man know these things! Hey, stop that!” Cigarette clamped in my teeth, I had begun to sort his laundry (the source of the mess of his room and the bane of my existence) into piles - darks, leather, darker darks and unsavable/unwashable. I wasn’t a believer in the whole “a man needs a woman to keep him organized” theory, but I often found that I stuck to the mantra simply because messy rooms irked me so.

“Stop what? In my own defense, Jyrks, I didn’t really expect you to be lounging about in your underwear - did your neck get cold but not your chest and the majority of your legs?” I asked with a laugh as I lobbed a leather jacket at him through the room (a feat which took considerable strength).

“But, my paper,” Jyrki deflected the jacket with his palm like he was Highlander or something - there can only be one enormous highlander, jackets cannot defeat Jyrki! - and plopped down on the floor like a stubborn child.

“Come now, a night of fun will help you infuse that boring Chemistry paper with life and movement… Fine. I’ll help you out with it tomorrow?” I crossed the room as I spoke, and plucked the smoke from between my lips so I could bend and plant a kiss on his cheek to make his slight smile grow.

“Sinikka?” Hanna was calling from the kitchen as I pulled Jyrki to his feet (no easy task, given his height versus my own), I left him to bundle up in interest of retrieving my drink.

“Do you have your ears pierced?” Her question took my by surprise as I sucked on my fag and reached for the cup of Jack and Coke that her extended hand held.

“Why do you ask?” The question was wary, I could sense that if I replied either way, Hanna was going to have some harebrained scheme to somehow get me in some sort of trouble with my ears. I wasn’t certain how it would happen, but I was entirely sure it would simply because Hanna was that dastardly.

“Yes or no?” I shook my head no - of course I didn’t have my ears pierced, why would I? - and instantly regretted the movement as the corners of Hanna’s mouth turned up into her trademark impish grin.

“What do you have up your sleeve, Hanna?” Jyrki asked as he retrieved his drink. I busied myself from the thought of what Hanna was about to put me through by putting the alcohol and soda into their respective paper bags, along with a few spare plastic cups from the infinite supply Jyrki and Ville kept around the kitchen for the sake of partying like rock stars.

“Oh, nothing, nothing.” I rolled my eyes - Hanna, up to nothing? She and Ville were the worst practical jokers and pranksters I had ever met, Hanna more so than her boy.

Half an hour later I found myself in a chair facing Jyrki, Hanna and Ville, and cursing the misfiring brain cell that had decided telling Hanna I didn’t have my ears pierced wasn’t a bad idea after all. The taller brunette had busied herself with making my drink a bottomless pit of Jack Daniels - the cup hadn’t an ounce of coke in it by the time we reached the tattoo parlor and I had been forced to clutch at Jyrki drunkenly for straight-line-walking support. It was a wonder that the ‘Vamps never got in trouble with the police for being drunk in public - we were always drunk and nearly always in fucking public.

“I don’t think I wanna do this. I don’t think I wanna do this,” I slurred and tightened my grip on Jyrki’s enormous hand, nearly pulling him into my lap with the sheer force of my grip. But Hanna had talked me all the way into the damned chair, and I had already paid money (good money, which could have been used on coffee or cigarettes like the one I crunched between my teeth) for a set of twinkling rhinestone studs; I also had a feeling that the man who was sterilizing the first needle would be extremely upset if I jumped ship, it had taken him forever to place the prospective holes to my liking.

Oh god. A man with a needle was about to punch holes in my ear (in his defense, he hadn’t wanted to given my obvious inebriation, but Hanna’s powers of persuasion could move mountains).

“Get me more alcohol!” My chest fluttered as Hanna handed me a cup with a good bit of Jack in the bottom - I slugged it like a shot and asked for another before the strange heart defect I had recently (very recently) developed could kick in again.

“You know, you don’t have to do this sweetling,” Jyrki soothed as he stroked the hair from my face. The look I gave him conveyed the pressure I felt - if I didn’t just grow a pair and get my ears pierced, Hanna would never let me live down the moment I chickened out. Like she needed any more ammunition for her relentless teasing. I choked down another shot of Jack and held my smoldering and gnawed-on cig in between the fingers of one hand; I clutched Jyrki’s hand as is my life depended on remaining in his grasp with the other hand.

“I’m ready.”

“You sure?” The pierced asked, poised with a needle. I gave a terrified nod before my neck paralyzed itself into rigidity - what had I been thinking, letting Hanna talk me into this, I was afraid of needles for God’s sake! College, really? All the extra education in the world hadn’t yet helped me develop common sense!

The man’s fingers firmly grasped the first earlobe in his hand, and punched the needle through the bare skin. The pain was… not excruciating like I would have thought; a slight pinch as Hanna had promised. It wasn’t the pain though, that drew my attention, but the fact that there was a needle in my skin - going straight through my ear! I grasped Jyrki’s hand tightly, the cigarette in the other was slowly bending, tobacco slid from a hole in the paper onto the floor.

The second ear hurt more! How in hell had Ville managed to sit still for that enormous tattoo? Needles! Argh! I gripped Jyrki’s hand tighter, preparing for impact…

And there was none. I was able to unscrew my eyes and glance around like a spooked horse, trying to find the hidden second man with the hidden second set of needles, but there was none. Nobody tried to tackle me down to the chair when I sat up, nobody shoved me down when I shakily reached for the second shot of Jack, Jyrki saved me from spilling it all over myself, but I was otherwise free of the execution chair.

“Th-thank you.”

Ville took the crushed cigarette from me and disposed of it in the nearest ash tray - it still burned despite the abuse it had undergone while I had been in the chair. The curly-haired man’s arm was completely wrapped in a piece of trash bag, taped down at the wrist, elbow and shoulder.

“Come on love, have a seat.” Jyrki was directing me to another chair - a normal chair, one not reminiscent at all of the stories based in the US where they put their prisoners to death by lethal injection. Not reminiscent at all. I sunk down into it as my knees buckled. “More alcohol, she needs to be drunk-er!”

Hanna was all too happy to make me a mixed drink with the remaining Jack Daniel’s and a dash of Coca-cola.

“We were going to go to Mary Malone’s if you’re not too traumatized honey pie,” Hanna teased as I snatched the drink from her hand and attempted to slurp as much of it down as I could before I began to cough and splutter at the slow burn of the liquor in my stomach. I might have nodded (I dunno because my entire body had gone numb, not just my face), but whatever motion I managed to make, Jyrki and Ville yanked me up by the armpits and rushed me out to the street to empty my stomach.

I could feel the Jack tumbling out of my throat, but could also feel Jyrki’s hand on the back of my neck and on my arm, Hanna’s soothing hands holding my hair out of my face, Ville’s steadying hand on the flat of my back. A set of damned good friends to be certain.

When I was done puking, I shoved a slice of bread (which had materialized out of nowhere) down my throat and we made our way to the Irish pub down the street.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title credit; Paul McCartney
> 
> Finnish-to-English;  
> kulta - darling.


	10. Dance tonight

“Oi, vittun! Sit still Jussi, or I’m going to end up slicing off your ear!” They rhythmic clip of Hanna’s scissors ceased as Jussi squirmed beneath her. I could almost hear her nails digging into his scalp as she attempted to steady the child-like man. Hanna and I, as unofficial band stylists, were making a valiant attempt at preparing the five men for their first concert - and despite all of their best efforts, we were doing quite well. I was able to give a fair impression of someone who actually knew something about the “goth” style the boys were trying on for the show - more black than I had ever seen them all in at once.

“I just can’t fucking believe you guys are making fucking me do this, ei vittun saatana” Jussi accused, as if the people who were really making him chop the horrible mop of brown, curly straw he called hair were still hovering in the room. The had become bored when Hanna cut off a nine inch long ponytail of hair and shoved it in the trash can with disgust. I could only laugh at Jussi’s antics as I passed by the kitchen in time to hear Hanna reprimanding him for fidgeting.

“Have a cigarette, Jus. It‘ll all be over soon.” I tossed the remains of my pack at him while I crossed the house once again - as I had been doing for nearly an hour - from Jyrki’s room to Ville’s room and back with a stick of eyeliner and a container of black eye shadow in one pocket of my borrowed jeans and a brace of studs and a pair of pliers in the other, two red bandannas and two black bandannas hung from the belt loops. I felt like a harried mother chasing after her children - even though I was chasing after the men to “goth” them up some more, as if their black leather and black band shirts weren’t enough.

I had chased Timo and Pasi down for eyeliner, each had allowed me to slather it on with varying levels of protest as they “leathered up” in Ville’s bedroom and bathroom. I had tied a folded black bandanna over Timo’s dark mop to hold it out of his eyes, tucked a red one into Pasi’s back pocket, added extra silver studs to each of their ensembles, and both had been thankful of my services. A sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach told me this would probably not be the case with Jyrki and Archie.

Chaos greeted me in Jyrki’s bedroom; Archie jumped about the room in a vain attempt to fit his underwear-clad ass into a pair of Jyrki’s leathers - which were obviously too small for his legs, and Jyrki hadn’t even gotten dressed yet - he held two pairs of black pants up to me, begging me to tell him which ones were right.

“God, I don’t know Jyrki, you’re spinning them around like you think I can get a good look while they’re in motion!” I snatched both pairs from him and threw one back. “One is both the same.” I sighed, as Archie finally managed to pull the pants up to his waist; I waited for the crunch of splitting seams which never came.

“Ok. I have bandannas, studs, and black makeup. Who’s first?” Jyrki raised his hand impishly. “Don’t be silly, you have to get dressed first babe. Archie. Sit.” Archie looked at me as if I had suddenly turned red, sprouted a pair of horns and was dancing about in lederhosen rather than asked him if I could put his makeup on (in retrospect, putting makeup on men did sound quite odd).

“Hell no, you’re not putting that makeup shit on me!”

“That’s what you say now, and when you look like you don’t have eyes on stage because they don’t stand out from your face at all, and that fact keeps you from getting ladies,” I lifted an eyebrow as I secured a red bandanna around the sleeve of the jacket he would be wearing. “You so certain now?”

“No makeup.”

“Fine.” I sighed, turning away slowly. “You’ll regret it.” He didn’t say anything more, so I crossed the room to where Jyrki was deliberating over shirts. “Wear the Jack Daniels shirt.” I pulled it from the ruckus of balled-up shirts in his dresser drawer and laughed at his stunned look.

“How did you do that? I would have had to pull out each and every shirt!”

“It’s a different shade of black than the rest, honey.” I pressed the shirt to his chest and allowed him a short kiss before I shot off to the closet - I selected the leather jacket he was going to wear and sat on the bed with it, attaching more studs to it methodically (after working on Timo and Pasi, I was damned good at putting studs in leather). I felt Jyrki’s lips press against the back of my bare neck after a few moments at work.

“You’re amazing, sweetling,” I spared him a smile before I snatched his leg to tie a black bandanna around it.

“Makeup time, then?” A sly grin worked itself across my face as he sat down on the bed - a gesture I took to be a sign of submission to my makeup skills (or lack thereof). I hadn’t finished one eye before I heard a shout from the kitchen, followed by a string of curses in more languages than I could imagine. “Belts. Gloves. I’ll be right back, dear.” Jyrki pouted as I swept out of the room.

Jumaluta, today was screwed-up enough to make me swear up and down the hallway in exasperation (of course, I didn‘t, but I could have). Not a single thing had gone right since I had been so rudely awakened by Jyrki at nearly eight hundred hours - eight in the bloody morning! I hadn’t realized I was fresh out of cigarettes until we were nearly to Jussi’s house (I forced Jyrki to stop at a corner store), Jussi was hung over and we could barely drag him back to Jyrki and Ville’s apartment (again I had stopped at a liquor store for liquid encouragement to battle his hangover with), Archie was in a pissy mood and had broken a bass string earlier (I hear something about the new string not being stretched properly for the concert), Timo and Pasi were late and Pasi was not to be referred as Bazie (I called him the artiste formerly known as Pasi). To top it all off, I still hadn’t had my morning coffee - and it was nearly sixteen hundred hours!

The kitchen looked as if it were the site of a massacre - hair and blood everywhere. The great cat massacre, perhaps? Jussi and Hanna stood at opposite ends of the room screaming a string of curses at one another so profound that I was certain the pair had lapsed into the Russian Mat language of obscenities. I snatched my cigarettes from the island of the kitchen and lit one, before I entered the fray.

“Jussi, Hanna! Please stop! For the love of all things holy, shut up!”

“She cut my ear! This is bullshit! I didn’t even want my hair cut in the first place!” Jussi turned his shouts to me as I puffed serenely on my fag. Hanna expressed her displeasure with Jussi in much the same way - at the top of her lungs.

“He wouldn’t sit still, it’s not my fault he’s a fucking tweak! Ei, vittun!” I assessed the situation briefly while I sucked on the filter of my cigarette.

“Hanna, take this. Go turn on the stereo - no, I don’t care what you put on, just put it on loud enough to drown out the shouting. Then you can put studs on Jyrki’s jacket. I’ll finish cutting Jussi’s hair, and then I’ll put the dye on. No buts! Go!” I quickly shoved my stud kit and the makeup into Hanna’s nicked and cut hands (she too had sustained a beating from Jussi’s fidgeting) before I turned to the boy with half a haircut. “Well, you’re not going on stage looking like that, I’ll tell you that right now. Come here.”

A pair of cartoon-character plasters and a few snips later and I had managed to subdue Jussi’s squirming and had been able to advance to applying black hair dye to what little hair remained of his enormous lion’s mane.

“We’re done - that wasn’t horrible was it? Go get as dressed as you can. No, don’t change you shirt until we finish your hair, you dolt!” Really, the boys were no better than children, I should have been paid for my services. With a sigh, I proceeded back to the bedroom where Jyrki was in hopes of maybe putting his makeup on myself - it would have been nice if Hanna had refrained from putting makeup on my boy.

“Come here my sexy darling,” This was not the case (Hanna was not well versed in the code of conduct of all girls), Jyrki had a thick smearing of eyeliner around both eyes rather than just the one I had finished.

“You left him with half a face, Sinikka!”

“You and Jussi were about to knife each other!” I sighed in exasperation before I allowed Jyrki to wrap his arms around my shoulders. “Hey honey,”

“Hei, kulta.” His lips touched my forehead - a habit I never wanted him to break. For a few moments, as I stared up into those ice blue eyes and he into my slate grays, it felt as if we were actually alone in the room, as if today hadn’t sucked enormous whale balls. “Let’s do this thing,” He said finally, and with a peck on the lips my whirlwind of a boyfriend was off again, and so was I.

“Hanna, what is this crap you have for me to wear?” I called - Hanna had made an attempt to force Archie into makeup and had been far more successful than I with the stubborn man. She answered from the bathroom.

“Cool clothes. No polo’s, no khaki. You have to try and fit in sometimes, Sini, tonight’s as good a night as any to give it a try,”

“Fine. But I’m not letting you near my head with that teasing comb of yours,” I slipped into Hanna’s loaned black cigarette jeans (my diet of coffee and cigarettes and frequent walks up many flights of stairs had sloughed the padding from Oulu right off my small frame). She had left me some sort of strange shirt - off the shoulder, I figured out after a few misfired attempts of putting my head through the sleeve. My favorite leather jacket of Jyrki’s was to go over the shirt, there was even an array of jewelry for me to wear. I tied a red bandanna around my leg like I had seen Jyrki do so many times.

“Hanna?” She whisked her way into the room, already halfway dressed in her own black attire.

“Ah, Sini, you look so great!” I scowled at her, a cigarette between my lips as she attempted to do my makeup - black and red, just like she had done her own eyes. Great, I was going to be a carbon copy of Hanna all night (I would have rolled my eyes at the thought but a sharp eyeliner pencil was in dangerous proximity to the peepers).

“Thanks, it’s all your fault,” I beamed at her as well as I could through all of the makeup. “Did you get the dye off of Jussi’s head?”

“He’s high and dry - doing something with a straightener and a shit ton of gel in the bathroom right now.” My eyes widened briefly at the thought of Jussi with slicked back hair, but Hanna read my mind and set me straight. “He’s doing some crazy spiky thing.”

“Ah. Must I wear all of this jewelry?” I prodded as I watched Hanna slide bracelets down her wrists.

“Yep. And take that thing off!” She pointed a crooked finger at the little silver Chanel necklace I had worn in a vain attempt at normalcy.

“Aww, really? You’re a cruel mistress, Hanna.” I managed to fit the bracelets around my abnormally large hands - nothing ever fit well on my wrists if it could fit past my hands, I never wore bracelets because of it - slid too-tight rings on my fingers, and added a few necklaces to my original piece.

“Off.” Hanna made as if to rip the thing from my neck.

“Fine! Fine!” I slid the dainty silver piece into a skintight pocket and bolted out of the room before Hanna could inflict any more damage on my dwindling sense of fashion.

“Jyrki, kulta, look what she’s done to me!” I cried in mock horror as I escaped Hanna’s dastardly clutches, cigarette in hand. “I look like Sandra Dee in Grease!”

“No, no, the hair’s not big enough!” Jussi attacked my head from behind - his hands scraped over my scalp in an attempt to make my flat hair float about my head in a manner reminiscent of Hanoi Rocks and Motley Crue; a failed effort.

“Get off my head!”

I ended up running from Jussi - right out the door, down the stairs and onto the street before he gave up. Bootsteps followed the pair of us out into the cold night air, I was thankful for the added warmth of Jyrki’s side when he finally drew to my side.

“Ready to rock?” I answered with a pained grimace as we boarded the metro - guitars, black and all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title credit; Genesis.
> 
> Finnish-to-English;  
> vittun - fuck, or an equivalent curse.  
> ei vittun saatana - literally “Fuck Satan,” generally used when things are really fucked up.  
> jumaluta - goddamn it.  
> ei, vittun - ah, fuck!  
> kulta - darling


	11. Burning love

The venue wasn’t Tavastia, as I had originally thought, but its “sister club” (or so they tried to tell me, I doubted it by the looks of the place) called Semifinal. The boys had disappeared backstage as soon as we arrived, all mumbling something about a sound check and stumbling into one another as they fled and left Hanna and I alone. We chose a table near the front and sat, lit smokes and chatted until I was able to order a drink - and a piece of French Toast (why it was in the menu I’ll probably never know, but it was there and I was hungry). I chewed thoughtfully as Hanna - deep into her first Cuba Libre of the evening - explained her love of Ville to me. It wasn’t the first time she had professed her love of him to me while he wasn’t around, and it wasn’t the first time I wondered why she didn’t profess it to him directly.

“Where is Ville tonight, anyway?” I prodded, nursing my White Russian. I didn’t really want to wake up with a hangover tomorrow (though in the back of my mind I knew it would happen no matter how hard I wished it wouldn’t) and so I planned to take it easy until the boys were done playing.

Deep down, I was jealous of Ville and Hanna - they were just so love-y and cute. When the pair were together, their eyes would meet and they would get this look like they would both turn into puddles of sop if they didn’t make out right that very instant. Jyrki and I didn’t have that - we had never even said weather or not we were officially “dating,” when people were around we were too distracted with catering to their needs rather than our own, Jyrki was always working with his band or we would talk about Chemistry-related things - a subject in which there was no room for romance. However, it wasn’t as if either of us were very big into PDA; maybe if I finally let him have sex with me…

“He’s coming, he’s coming. He had to go see his parents today.” I nodded in answer, dragged out of my revelry. I hadn’t seen Paavo in what seemed like days - we were both on Winter break, but he had been mooning about with Kirsi and had apparently forgotten about his beloved little sister. He was supposed to show tonight, just like Ville; but unlike Ville, Paavo would show with one of my least favorite people in Helsinki on his arm.

As we chatted, the sound of an out-of-tune guitar (Paavo had taught me something about music) cut through the crowd. Then an in-tune guitar; the pair tuned together until a deep grumble greeted the crowd. A bass joined in, and Jussi (it was obviously hyperactive Jussi) beat the skins ruthlessly for a most obnoxious drum roll. It was then that I could make out Jyrki - standing on stage with a microphone waiting for the din to die down a little before he started to sing.

I shifted uncomfortably in the tight pants Hanna had forced me into; I didn’t feel like myself, I felt like I was posing as something I was not - I definitely wasn’t the type to wear a damned outfit like this. Sure, I’d wear Jyrki’s jackets, but that was because he was my… significant other. After so many years of Polo’s, I felt strange to be in this off-the-shoulder, collarless/colorless garb. I was beginning to think I was addicted to being the sore thumb, as well; the anonymity of fitting did not suit my tastes (especially since I could tell Jyrki was scanning the crowd looking for me but couldn’t quite locate me out of a sea of similarly-dressed girls).

“Look Sini, they’re going backstage. Suppose we should go find them?” A sly smile crossed Hanna’s face, and I mirrored it on my own, securing my cigarettes between my breasts before we vacated our little table for greener pastures.

I felt Jyrki’s arms ensnare me as Hanna and I passed through a low archway in the backstage area - Hanna had no problems convincing the bouncer that we belonged backstage for the simple fact that Ville’s band(s) had played at the club on numerous occasions. Forgetting I had a drink in hand, I turned in Jyrki’s grasp - only his quick thinking kept the drink from becoming a lovely addition to his leather jacket.

“Hey sweetling, be careful about where you’re slinging your alcohol!” He pulled my face to his for a quick kiss (in plain view of all the guys! Gasp!) - and I reveled at how his kisses always made me feel like I had cleared an entire bottle of vodka on my own.

“Sorry, I forgot I had it.”

“I have that effect on people,” I laughed at his supposed arrogance and planted another kiss on his chin (all I could reach, Jyrki had at least half a foot on me). “I have a surprise for you tonight,”

“Oh you do?” I grimaced slightly into his hair - I had already thwarted three attempts on my virginity in the last month; once a week he attempted the “perfect” setting he had promised me, and once a week the time wasn’t right. The first attempt, I had been incredibly hungover, the second I was on the rag, the third time I accidentally knocked over a candle upon entering his room and burned a hole in one of his favorite pairs of leather pants. It had been a long month.

“It’s a good surprise, I think you’ll like this one.” I raised an eyebrow, a wry smile crossed his face as he looped his arm around my waist, threw his other over Hanna’s shoulders and brought us back to a most disgusting dressing room. The place smelled like an entire football team after playing a close (but winning) game and had taken off their cleats but not showered. It was enough to make me gag. Only Jussi was brave enough to sit on the couch - which must have had the capability to transfer rare diseases and STD’s via skin contact - everyone else hovered about the place with assorted beverages. Jyrki retrieved a glass of vodka from the table as we walked in.

“When do you guys go on?” Ville’s voice called from the doorway. I turned in time to see Hanna tackle him, a flurry of limbs into the disgusting couch dislodged Jussi from his seat.

“Good question.” Jussi bounced to sit on the stool I was about to plop down on; our glares were cut by Jyrki’s answer.

“I dunno, twenty minutes or so.” The tall man settled himself behind me, his arms wrapped around my waist and his head on my shoulder - he must have bent nearly double. I tangled my free hand in his long locks, enjoying the attention.

Just minutes later, Jyrki was torn from my back by a mousey-looking man who demanded that the band go backstage to get ready. I had no qualms with that, the smell of the dressing room had started to permeate my being. Hanna, Ville and I perched on a pair of amplifiers - Ville and Hanna sat on top of each other, and I sat cross-legged as I had when I observed the boys play that first time while I attempted to avoid looking too closely at the disgustingly happy couple beside me.

“Sini, honey?” I had been staring across the crowd, wondering how in hell Jyrki didn’t have huge nerves when the man in question placed his hand on the small of my back; his voice was the epitome of calm as the harsh howls of the crowd grew louder. Briefly, I reached in my pocket and felt the small silver chain slip between my finger tips; I pulled it out, and with a brief glance at Hanna to make sure she wasn’t paying attention, I began to fasten it around my neck.

“Now I feel whole again,” I flashed Jyrki a broad grin; he gently turned the earring in my left ear with his broad fingertips and I froze like a cat caught sneaking out a partially open window. “What’re you doing?”

“I like them,” After all of the shit I had gone through with those earrings, he had better like them! They had gotten so infected at one point I had to actually go visit the pierced, and he told me I had either been neglectful or overly attentive - well what would he expect from the OCD girl who had forced him to move the dots on my ears (where the holes would be, the piercer had made the mistake of asking my opinion on how they were placed) no less than half a dozen times, of course I was going to be ‘overly attentive!’ I wasn’t certain that my wide-eyed stare could convey all of that to Jyrki, but he seemed to get the message by the way he laughed at my pained grimace.

“Hey, I have to go onstage in a minute, one for the road eh?”

“Break a leg out there - I’m told that’s what I’m supposed to say to you in order not to jinx anything.” I muttered in his ear as I reached to kiss his cheek.

“That’s it? That’s all I get?” Jyrki’s false anxiety and cute little pout made me cave - I placed another peck on his smooth cheek and one on his lips, ‘for the road’ as he had said. God I hate acting like a woman in love, it always felt like we were about to plunge into Shakespearian dialogue straight from Romeo and Juliet. The thought made me pout for a second, but I smoothed my face and wrapped my arms around Jyrki’s waist - all tragedy aside, the feeling of being loved was pretty damned great.

“Are you excited for your surprise, love?” His big paw rested on the top of my head as I buried it in his chest much in the same way I had seen Hanna embrace Ville from a seated position. Gag. This lovey-dovey stuff was damned difficult, maybe there was a damned good reason Jyrki and I weren’t big into the whole PDA thing; it wasn’t that I didn’t love to hug and kiss the man, I simply believed those motions were supposed to be private. Blame the parents.

“Very.” I grinned into his chest, wincing as the announcer screamed the band’s name into the microphone - the amplifier beneath me rumbled and sent vibrations up my spine (a very strange sensation). “Go! Go!”

“I love you!” The tall man slipped from my grasp before I could force him to repeat himself - I was left to sit dumbstruck on top of an extremely loud and vibrate-y amp, searching desperately for a light for my cigarette.

“Ville!” I managed to get the brown-haired man’s attention over the ruckus of Jyrki’s band’s playing - they called themselves The 69 Eyes, I reminded myself sharply, it wouldn’t do to forget my boy’s band’s name - and beg for a light for the smoke. He simply handed me his half-smoked fag and instructed me to light off of it. By the time I passed it back, the boys had begun to play their second song of the night.

I found myself on my feet, and made a beeline to a closer spot on the side of the stage, a place where I could lean against a black wall and watch Jyrki throw himself around the stage. In his defense, he didn’t quite throw his body around, he simply ruled the entire thing - if he wanted to pretend his mic stand was a guitar and thrash Bon Jovi-style with Timo and Pasi, then that was alright, if he wanted to swing the stand around like a sword, then that was the coolest thing ever, if he wanted to spin around in a circle smashing his foot against the ground while singing, that was amazing! I couldn’t help but sigh at the reactions of the crowd to Jyrki’s unconscious flirting, it was actually rather difficult to watch. With a sigh, I turned away from the stage and sought out a person who could bring me a drink.

When I finally had a tall glass of Vodka (which I ended up sharing with Ville because it was “payback for the light”), I returned to my amplifier seat, shifting uncomfortably until I decided that - like Hanna and Ville - I could definitely no longer sit on the thing because of the band’s ruckus and moved to the wall I had leaned on before, watching Jyrki like a hawk.

“It’s difficult, isn’t it?” I spun to face Hanna as she shouted into my ear to be heard over the din.

“What?” Oh, so eloquent Sinikka, I reprimanded myself as I let my focus slide back to Jyrki, flirting with the crowd. I knew exactly what she was talking about.

“Watching him work with the crowd.” I nodded; that certain charisma he knew worked so well on me also worked wonders on the horde of gothic girls who rushed the front of the stage - their pulsating mass moved in unison to Jyrki’s lips. A heavy sigh escaped me as I attempted to thwart it with smoke.

“It is. But it’s almost over.” Hanna nodded sagely, a beacon of poise among the chaos onstage and in the crowd; apparently Jussi had tossed himself off the stage after their last song. I selfishly hoped his spiky black hair poked an eye out.

“You just gotta remember that you’re better than all of those girls out there, Sini. You’re the one that he brings home at night.” Her comment elicited the flash of a smile. “Hell, after all of the trouble you put him through?” That mischievous grin made me raise an eyebrow - what the hell did she know that she was going to use to bully me into a harebrained scheme this time? In the background of our little staring contest, Jyrki introduced the last song as he had all of the others.

“This song is for my girlfriend. It’s called Burning Love, by Elvis.”

Mouth agape, I rounded on Ville and Hanna, both of whom were giggling incessantly at my shock; but I didn’t have the heart to let them have a piece of my mind while Jyrki was singing for me. For me!

I could have swooned with satisfaction. Instead, I ordered another drink and prepared myself to receive Jyrki as he ran offstage. Besides, it wouldn’t do to turn into a melty, wishy-washy mess every single time a rock star dedicated a song to me - like it happened that often.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title credit; Elvis Presley.
> 
> So when I wrote this story, I swore I’d try and use a song from every 80’s band I can think of and never use the same band twice. But, ah, special case. Besides, Elvis is one of Jyrki’s favorites!


	12. Chapter 12

God it was a nice feeling to be back in normal clothes; for the past three nights Hanna had dressed me up like her own private Barbie doll for ‘Eyes shows, and I hadn’t the heart to tell her that enough was enough until the series of shows was over. Dressed in a knee-length grey skirt with knee-high socks, an argyle sweater and a yellow polo, I could have stepped into any private school in Greater Helsinki and fit right in. But I wasn’t set on being a lurking pedophile - I had to go shopping for Paavo, Jyrki, Hanna and Ville for Christmas (I didn’t have to, but to me such an action was obligatory, just like the thank you notes I had in my purse for the gifts I was to receive).

Jussi had been a sweetheart and invited the lot of us to his house for Christmas dinner - as ‘the lot of us’ were all quite far away from home for the holidays - I had a pair of drumsticks in my bag with a bow around them for him. Not just any drumsticks, though, this pair were to his specifications of how he liked to drum (heavy on the tip, like I understood why that was any good at all), painted black and had a trail of little red vampire bats. I had been extremely proud of the purchase. For Paavo, I had painstakingly tracked down the complete works of Metallica in Treble clef (rather than tabbed for guitar - again, it made no sense, but it mattered to my brother), which also rested in my bag. I had found the most lovely black scarf for Ville - it had metallic threads of assorted colors woven into it - in a children’s shoppe; for Hanna I bought a skimpy black metallic shirt that I was certain she would love (it was black and metallic, for Christ’s sake).

But Jyrki. Shopping for Jyrki was a hell of a problem.

For some reason I couldn’t find a single thing in all of the stores in Helsinki where something he would like could be purchased. Nothing! It was like the man already had everything - so what the hell was I to get him? Lingerie had been suggested, but I had always thought that a stupid gift to get one’s significant other, it would have been more a gift for myself than him and definitely would have sent all the wrong messages about “waiting for the right time.” A gal just had to be careful about that.

Maybe I should just suck it up and make the right rime for myself, I thought as I passed a shop who’s window was filled with studded leather items - the likes of which Jyrki already owned. I sighed and sparked up a cigarette, letting the smoke fill my lungs as I waited to be able to cross the street.

As I began to cross, I saw a familiar shape in the distance - tall, with curly brown hair shrouded in a cloud of smoke, Valo was a distance ahead of me in the crowd. I dragged the scarf I had gotten him from around my neck (of course I wore it before I gave it to him, it was damned cute!) and hurried after the smog that I knew to be his trail.

“Ville!” But the tall man couldn’t hear me through the crowd of Christmas shoppers and slipped away into a store on a street corner. The bell dinged in the shop as I followed him in - and I realized with horror I had just followed Ville into a sex shop. Oh lord.

Embarrassment colored my cheeks as I turned to rush out quickly, when a familiar voice called my name.

“Oooh, Sinikka, come to buy something for Jyrki have you?” My face must have been maroon with the force of the blood in my cheeks.

“Please, I was just, ah…” I stumbled over my sentence as Valo perched on the cashier’s desk, his cigarette dangling between his lips. “I was just following you to see what you were up to,” I felt like a little girl who had been dragged into a sex shop - I practically was a little girl that had been dragged into a sex shop, metaphorically speaking. Ville regarded me in silence with a raised eyebrow. “I need help shopping for Jyrki, but this wasn’t what I had in mind.” My voice was firm - as firm as I could manage, being on the verge of a seizure and all.

His green-eyed gaze level, Ville actually began to laugh at me. If my cheeks could have turned a deeper shade of red, they would have.

“Well why are you here, then?” I demanded of him, about to throw down my things and walk out (ok, maybe I’d carry out my amazing Christmas presents with me). How could he sit there on the cashier’s desk and laugh at me! Like I’d ever willingly (or knowingly) walk into one of these places!

“This is my dad’s store. I work here.” Cue the jaw dropping straight through the floor and into the basement.

“I - uh - oh.” Ville’s slow smile was enough to relax me, if only a little; it was clear he wouldn’t judge me for going into the shop like Hanna would have (though I doubted he wouldn’t tell the little dastardly girl).

“You needed help getting Jyrki something? You know there’s an amazing leather shop he likes to frequent just down the road,” Ville clambered over the counter and sat on the little stool there as I set my things down on the glass display (partially in order to hide the dildos and vibrators on display).

“He already has something like everything in there, and I wanted to get him something unique. I thought maybe you could help, because you two are such good mates.” I sighed, and ashed my smoke into the ashtray he had ready.

“If you don’t mind me asking - have you two resolved that little issue I heard you had a few months ago?” I tried to stonewall him, tried to puppy-dog eye him into thinking that I didn’t know what he was talking about, but Ville’s eyes were just so piercing - and something told me he knew that we hadn’t.

“Still a virgin.” Palms up, I confessed as if to a Priest and shrugged as if it wasn’t that big of a deal, like I hadn’t just sold my biggest secret to a man who’s girlfriend I knew much better than he. Something internally forced me to smile a little - a pained, forced thing as I finally began to fidget with the bags on the counter, careful not to spill their contents lest Ville see the scarf before his time.

“You know he’s not going to be able to wait forever, kultaseni. Jyrki’s bound to burst sometime.” How was it that Ville was better at girl-talk than Hanna was? I sighed, knowing how right he was.

“I just, I mean. Aw, vittun.” After I spoke, I clamped a hand over my mouth. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be obscene about it,” I mumbled through my fist and cig. Ville chuckled, and lit another fag as he waited for me to speak.

“I just feel like I know nothing, and that he’ll… uh… be frightened away.” I sighed, and finally allowed my shoulders to sag. “I don’t know what to expect.” The glance I took showed that Ville’s face was sympathetic - as if he were playing the part of caring older brother.

“Well, you’re not going to need sex toys, that’s for certain.” He faked a grimace as he emerged from behind the counter and moved a misplaced object (I wasn’t beyond blocking each and every item in that store out of my mind with little black bars) from a foreign display to it’s home carousel as if it were nothing to him. “But you’re going to have to make that perfect time you’ve been trying to force him to make for yourself.”

Oh that horrible, horrible man! Had he really spilled his guts to Ville about all of this, thinking that it was nothing? I found it difficult to be angry with either of the men - boys! - though, Ville was more than right about the “perfect time,” and Jyrki was more than right to seek the advice of his best friend in order to successfully woo me. Secretly, I wondered how Jyrki had survived such a long wait if it was so important to guys - did he have hairy palms or was his eyesight deteriorating and I hadn’t even noticed his plight? I laughed aloud at the thought - and found myself wilting under Ville’s striking gaze to spill with a fist over my mouth for the second time that day. I managed to relay the thought to the brown-haired man without too much chuckling, and he was forced to gnaw on his own knuckle to suppress laughter (which wouldn’t have been professional to the other customer in the store).

“Let’s just say it’s been a true testament to how much he loves you - and you’d never even have known it.” Ville shook his head ruefully, as if he and Jyrki stayed up at night and chatted about these things while painting each other’s nails black. Come to think of it, Hanna and I did usually pass out from alcohol consumption before the boys did - but that was something I had always contributed to our size in relation to how much we all drank. The image of hulking Jyrki and Ville with his hair in curlers and a green clay mask on both of their faces almost made me burst out laughing again.

“Well, if I don’t need sex toys, what should I do? How do I - oh, Christ, this is so obscene.”

“That’d be the first thing you need to get over, love. It’s a natural part of life, and you’re not exactly the epitome of a Catholic good-girl, you need to get over that hump.” I giggled at the imagery of his last, but Ville’s stern glare silenced me. I perched on the counter as he began to move more things about the room, replacing that which was misplaced with a practiced ease.

“I resent that remark! I do happen to be a good Catholic girl. Not very prevalent in Finland, but we’ve got a good following, Jesus and I.” My teeth clamped down on the fleshy part of my hand as I fought back peals of self-inflicted laughter, laughter which stemmed off the nervousness this odd situation inspired in me. Talking to Ville about sex, and asking for his advice? Not something normal.

“Hey! Ville! I still need your help!”

“Oh, sorry darling.” He meandered back from the front of the story. “Dunno how much help I can be, though, considering my sex and all.”

“Well - ah.” Finally, I realized I was going to have to be forward and obscene to get the information I required. God, everything that had to do with sex required nerve. “Tell me about your first time.” My glance - over the trail of smoke from my cigarette - was apologetic. Despite how uncomfortable the question was to ask, Ville simply laughed it off.

“That’s not going to help you at all, we were both drunk at the time. Definitely not your ‘perfect setting.’” He leaned against the counter beside me and placed his smoke to his lips, staring off into the distance as if in deep thought. “Hanna and I had the most romantic first time of all of the women I’ve been with.” I shot him a glance - ‘all of the women I’ve been with?’ Excusez-moi, Ville.

“No, no, I didn’t mean it like that. I’ve not been with hordes of women, please don’t go telling Hanna that,” Ville’s palms turned towards me, pleading. I grinned and nodded sagely.

“I might not if you help me out!” Ville’s grin spread, as if he knew I would never tell.

“Well, uh, there were a lot of candles involved.” I though of Jyrki’s burnt leathers (which he still wore, with a piece of black duct tape over the hole!) with a pained wince. “Ok, no candles. What about sexy lingerie, yes? I could help with that one.” I propelled my head down toward my knees, catching it in my arms at the last second.

“I have plenty of that.” I could almost feel Ville’s eyes searing into my back, digging for an explanation. “I only wear matching sets.” I shrugged as well as I could under his burning gaze in my strange position.

“You could still use a candle you know. Come here, I’ll show you something.” With effort, I unraveled myself as I jumped off the counter and followed him deeper into the black abyss which was his father’s sex store.

I was surprised to see that they had candles of an assorted variety, and not all of them nastily shaped or disgustingly named. Some of them were labeled with the names of different essential oils.

“Now, keep in mind I’m not Jyrki, but Vanilla is my favorite. It’s about the only scent here that doesn’t make me have an asthma attack.” The though made me frown - Jyrki had developed a cough since the last gig, and it didn’t sound normal.

“Vanilla sounds good,” A too-causal image of Jyrki and I on his bed with a tub of vanilla ice cream beside our bodies made me cringe lightly, but I tried not to second-guess myself. Ville knew better than I.

“And you’ve got the lingerie. So make a thoughtful mix tape for a soundtrack and you two should be good to go.” His smile was soft and caring as he laid a hand on my shoulder after he rung up the candle. “Good luck, Sinikka.”


	13. Santa Claus is coming to town

I awoke to an angry fist pounding on my bedroom door - Paavo wanted in, and he wanted in bad.

“What’s your problem, I’m still in my pajamas.” Haughty, I drew a thick pillow over my head and rolled over on my stomach - a vain attempt at going back to sleep.

“Sini, wake the hell up!” Yep, it was Paavo alright, I didn’t have to worry that Jussi had somehow figured out where I lived and had arrived to collect us for a day’s festivities at his house.

“Why?” The question was a scream - like a stubborn child - but I was up and out of my bed, straightening my opaque black negligee before I opened the door. “What?”

“It’s Christmas!”

“Honey, you are sorely mistaken. It’s Christmas Eve.” With a sigh, I plopped back on my bed and lit the first cigarette of the day in hopes that the smoke might make my brother just a little bit more intelligent. “I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until tomorrow for your present. Can’t fool me into that twice.” A few years ago, when we still lived at home, Paavo had pulled the “it’s Christmas!” trick, and fooled me into giving him his present - three days early! Just because I didn’t wake well didn’t mean he had to take advantage.

With a pout, Paavo stalked to the couch and threw himself atop of it as I watched from my bed.

“You’re a brat!” He cried childishly. And I thought I was bad.

“Did you get Jussi’s mom a hostess gift?” I asked, as I began to painstakingly lay out my outfit for the day. One must be careful when selecting an outfit for Christmas, as too much red or green is overly cliché; and since green was one of the dominant colors of my wardrobe, I had gone shopping for my Christmas outfit weeks ago, and figured I had found the perfect color for the holiday. Brown.

Scratch that last. The little shift dress I had selected was more gold than anything, actually - gold and slightly taupe-ish as to not be completely tacky, I mused as I picked out the perfect undergarments for the thing. It was a three-quarter sleeve dress, and quite short so I had deemed a pair of nearly-opaque tights necessary.

“No, I didn’t get Jussi’s mother a gift, what do you think I am - gay?” I glanced at Paavo, flopped on the couch in a pair of basketball shorts.

“Sometimes I wonder.” I murmured, and closed the door.

An hour later I felt as put together as I’d ever be - the tights, the shoes, the caplet (very difficult to find in a shade that nearly matched the dress, and I probably would only wear it inside because it didn’t fit underneath Jyrki’s leather jacket), the black cardigan to match the tights, the hair band to match the dress… God, I was good at this fashion thing, I thought with a bright grin.

“Paavo! Let’s go!” He lay strewn on the couch again - this time in a different outfit of black suit pants, a crisp white shirt (rumpled by his position on the couch), his blazer lay over the back of the chair with his coat. “Get up, you great lummox!” I wasn’t quite certain what Lummox meant, but I had heard Hanna call Ville that once and figured it suited the situation. Paavo got to his feet with a grunt as I began wrapping my scarf carefully around my neck.

“We have to go! Let’s go! God, get up you slob!” I fastened a black cardigan around my waist with a thin gold belt (bought just for the dress) and piled on another, thicker layer before I slipped into Jyrki’s leather jacket - leather was a highly effective windbreaker. With Paavo in tow and a large bag of gifts under my arm, I set out to meet Jyrki and Ville at their bus stop, and then Hanna and Lauri at theirs before we all proceeded to Jussi’s parent’s home on the outskirts of Helsinki.

I had been to the house before, but had only seen the garage/basement of the pale building. The little house had a tiny Victorian façade, and was just as small inside, but was cozy. Jussi’s mother was some sort of decorating genius, I guessed; the couches Jussi placed us on were plush and warm - almost too warm for the many layers I had on.

“Vino, yes?” Someone had actually entrusted Jussi with a tray of beautiful, long-stemmed purple wine glasses and a bottle of red; I was on my feet in an instant to take the tray, but the boy practically glided with the tray. Must have been a hidden talent - or perhaps it was his destiny to be a waiter.

“Ah, please!” Ville snatched the bottle and poured for us; all but Lauri grabbed a glass (Hanna had slapped his wrist as he reached for one as she took a deep draught).

“Mom will be right out, she’s sorry she couldn’t see you at the door.” The scent of omenalimppu drifted from the kitchen and I drifted toward the delicious apple bread as I ditched my jacket(s) on the coat hanger.

“May I help, Mrs. Vuori?”

Over the course of an hour I added too many rutabaga to the lanttulaatiko, nearly sliced my finger off while skinning the Herring, and nearly overstuffed the taytetty jouluhanhi; Mrs. Vuori was too kind to kick me out of the kitchen and insisted on assisting me with all of my attempts at baking after I nearly set off the smoke alarm. But I made the coffee for desert without incident, and gained a kind smile from the woman. Proudly, I carried the pitcher of coffee to the table as Jussi’s mother presented the omenalimppu to us for desert. And she did love the purple candles I had bought as a hostess gift; said they matched her glassware perfectly.

I was surprised that I had managed to cause more turmoil than Jussi had. He was surprisingly well-behaved around his family - I figured his ADHD must kick in when he had too much to drink.

With copious amounts of leftovers and many more thanks, the lot of us left the house overstuffed and elected to walk most of the way home in order to work off the meal.

Paavo was reciting ‘The Night Before Christmas’ as we boarded separate busses - I was bound to Jyrki’s house, to create my own version of the story.

It was the night before Christmas and all through the apartment not a creature was stirring - which meant that Hanna and Ville had locked themselves inside Ville’s room as soon as we got home and weren’t making any noise (that Jyrki and I could hear). We stood together in Jyrki’s bedroom - the taller man had captured me in his lanky arms and murmured something about never letting me go, a frightening thought. What if I had to go to the bathroom, would he let me go then? I didn’t think he’d ever want to accompany me to a ‘women’s doctor,’ either.

“Are you excited for your Christmas present?” I questioned as I craned my neck backwards to gaze into the pair of icy blues somewhere above my head; it was quite difficult to see him in the dim light of his room (one of the light bulbs in the ceiling fan had gone out weeks ago and Jyrki had neglected to replace it, leaving one solider to light the room).

“But we’re not supposed to get our presents until tomorrow!” Jyrki mocked me and crushed the air from my lungs briefly before he allowed himself to be guided to the bed.

“Sit. Close your eyes. If you open them I will kill you!” I wriggled a finger under his nose to be certain he kept them closed, and quickly darted to the closet where I had managed to stash my “supplies” earlier that week.

I nearly burnt my finger lighting the vanilla-scented candle, and almost lit my scarf on fire as I let it slide to the ground on the way to hit the light switch. But I hadn’t counted on how dark Jyrki’s windowless room would be when lit by a single candle, and nearly killed myself trying to get to the tape player to turn on my selection of music.

“Can I open my eyes yet?”

“No!” I snapped, pressing every button on the player until it actually started to play. “There.”

Out of nowhere, a pair of strong arms wrapped themselves around my waist; I could feel Jyrki’s breath on my hair as he hooked his fingers into my belt as if to just hang them there for a while.

“What’s all this?” He asked into my ear, so quietly that I could barely hear him over the music.

“I decided that since all of your attempts have been thwarted, I’m going to make my own ‘perfect setting.’” I grinned and reached up to grab a handful of his thick black hair. “Hope you’re not offended,”

To prove he wasn’t, Jyrki’s lips focused on the patch of skin between my ear and the edge of my face, and traced down my jawbone to just beside my lips. I pushed backwards against him with my body, propelling us toward the bed before I managed to trip over one of the many jackets on the floor. With a grunt, I landed atop Jyrki on the floor, apologizing profusely until he placed a finger over my lips.

“Shush, you’re not that heavy.” He pulled himself from beneath my body, his fingers clutched a handful of the cloth at the waist of my dress and forced me to follow him to the bed; where I stood awkwardly.

“You know, you’re going to have to help me out here.” I sighed, wishing I had a cigarette; I hadn’t smoked enough, which made me irritable and sarcastic.

“Be patient.” His lips compressed mine beneath them, his tongue fought with mine (because my tongue had suddenly turned into a dragon trying to guard the chastity of my mouth as if it were its baby). “Like you said, what’s a few more years,” Jyrki teased, his hand traveled down the short length of my dress and disappeared under its hem before reappearing at my hipbone. How he could remain calm enough to joke around was beyond me - I had nearly hyperventilated as his hand tried to scratch its way through the thin layer of lingerie (why, oh why had I chosen the body-hugging Spanx for our “special” night?) which barred him from my bare skin.

“What is this thing?!” I helped Jyrki rip the dress off over my head (and by help I mean deterred him from tearing the cute little thing to shreds.

“It’s called a body briefer and, uh…” I began to babble as Jyrki toyed with the strapless thing, a sheet of black fabric between him and his prize.

“Darling, you’ve got to calm down.” For a moment, Jyrki’s blue eyes twinkled mischievously in the light of the candle “How do I get it off?”

It was my turn to grin as I pushed Jyrki back onto his dark bed with the heel of my palm. “You already have me down to my skivvies and you’re fully dressed. It’s your turn.” His enormous paws yanked me down to the bed beside him and his soft lips covered mine again as he rolled over atop of me. If his kisses hadn’t already forced the breath from my lungs, his weight would have - his torso lay heavily on my chest.

“Sinikka?” Damn him, I had just managed to get the shirt over his head. I acknowledged him with a grunt into his chest. “I love you,” He had a fistful of my hair, which directed my face to his.

“Mina rakastan sinua, Jyrki.”

When his hand finally reached for the buckle of his belt, I tensed; in a last-ditch effort to relax, I ran my fingers through his hair and nearly got them tangled in it (use a fucking brush, man). His hands found the small zipper on the side of the “body briefer” as his pants hit the floor, and he unzipped it more slowly than was necessary.

“Should I use a condom?” He asked gently, as I made an attempt to dive under the covers and pretend that this awkward moment wasn’t happening and that we had already gotten to the sex part of this whole thing. Jyrki hadn’t waited for my answer, simply pulled a rubber from the carton in his bedside table (where had that come from?) and cupped it in his hand as he pulled me up by the back to kiss me like a scene straight out of some famous Romance novel - tracing trail from my breastbone all the way to my lips.

“Jyrki?” My voice was no more than a pained whisper as that little sarcastic girl who lived in my head and came up with all of the witty lines to say hid in the back corner somewhere, leaving me to fend for myself; at the sound of his name Jyrki’s hands stopped where they were - one on my back and one supporting my head as one would a baby’s.

“Honey?”

“I’m frightened,”

“Don’t be afraid, little darling. I would never hurt you.”

As his body sunk down into mine and he found his rhythm, I realized he had unintentionally lied - he should have said would never purposefully hurt me. But after a while, I relinquished control and allowed the black-haired man to “manhandle” me; and realized that the sex was much better for it. In Jyrki’s defense - he really had tried to be tender, and Hanna had warned me that the first time was uncomfortable at best.

I fell asleep clutched in my lover’s arms, my head held tight to his chest as I silently wept for what I had lost and what I had gained; at least, I rationalized before I slept, my first time had meaning. It was more than most women could ever say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title credit; Bruce Springsteen (at least, that’s the version I used)
> 
> Finnish-to-English;  
> omenalimppu - Apple Bread  
> lanttulaatiko - Rutabaga Casserole  
> taytetty jouluhanhi - Stuffed Goose  
> mina rakastan sinua - I love you
> 
> I write the most awkward sex scenes ever put down on paper, so I usually attempt to avoid them all together. @.@ Sorry, folks, I hope it's alright.  
> Poor Sini, she's all conflicted.


	14. The sound of silence

The cough that began soon after the first gig had not gone away by the third, nor the thirteenth; and Jyrki’s full-body-dry-heave of a cough started to gain the attention and concern of people other than myself. I had thought, at first, that I was just being facetious, that the occasional wheezing and phlegm-moving cough would go away after a while. I was within hearing distance when Ville confronted Jyrki about it, telling him that it would only get worse and that he should just go see a doctor, but Jyrki stubbornly told Ville he was fine and he would be going nowhere near any hospital.

So life continued on as usual. Well, as close to usual as it could as the wheezing grew more frequent; Jyrki had even experienced shortness of breath in the bedroom so severe that he had been forced to roll over like a turtle on its back and quit. Jyrki. Quit. Sex. That was really cause for concern - mainly because I wasn‘t completely comfortable with the act and Jyrki wasn‘t the type to take a rain check if I was willing.

The next morning I made it a point to get up before he did; the scent of coffee was enough to draw Ville out of his room so I could tell him about the episode over a cigarette and two large mugs of black brew. I watched as his eyes widened with concern and narrowed with anger - Jyrki was unreasonably stubborn about doctors because of some trying event when he was young, neither Ville nor I could understand the sentiment due to the fact that doctor’s visits were so damned necessary to us. Ville had suffered from asthma so severe that most animals were off-limits since he was a child, and I had grown up trusting my doctors and what they had to say.

“He needs to get to a fucking doctor,” He murmured after I had concluded, a cigarette poised between his lips. There was no joking in his voice; there was very little I could draw humor from that cold January morning.

“No kidding,” I sighed into my coffee before I took a long draught. Ville pulled a black beanie hat over his brown curls - there was nothing more to say than what we already had, and there was almost no way to get Jyrki to the hospital without pushing him down a flight of stairs and calling an ambulance for him - and act I was ashamed to admit I had considered. After a few moments of silence, I took a breath of smoke and asked when Ville’s new band’s next gig was on the exhale - in much fewer words.

“Ah, next Tuesday we have one, and then another on Friday. Are you going to come to either?” His coffee cup was empty, like my own; I swiped them both from the counter and began to fill them from the pot on the stove as I answered.

“Well, probably not the Tuesday but -” I paused and turned my head toward Jyrki’s bedroom door where I had heard a loud cough followed by a thump.

One of the hefty ceramic mugs crashed to the floor - it must have bounced, I had dropped those things a hundred times while drunk and not one of the set of four had ever broken - as Ville and I raced down the hall toward the door. I never knew how long that damned hallway was. He yanked open the door just in time for me to pass through, I would have crashed right through it if he hadn’t. Mingled shouts of his name melted into curses as I stumbled over the mess of dirty laundry on the floor - hadn’t I just cleaned this damned mess yesterday? - to the side of the bed where Jyrki lay, facedown on the floor.

“Jyrki!” I pried his shoulders off the floor with much more strength than I had ever mustered. “Jyrki please wake up!” A shake of his shoulders set his eyelids aflutter. “Jyrki?” Gingerly, I touched a finger to his lips - a black substance dribbled from the corner of his mouth, a substance I knew to be blood but was too frightened to admit. “Ville call an ambulance!” The sound of his bare feet drummed down the hallway as I clutched my lover to my chest; I was lost in a sea of adrenaline and fear as I called his name and choked back tears.

“Please, Jyrki, ei vittun saatana, Jyrki!” Perhaps the strong language I had uttered startled him into rousing, but finally those icy blue eyes opened just a hair - I could barely see their color for they were merely slits in Jyrki’s pale face. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but only a wheezing gasp emitted from between his blood-covered lips - for a moment, I felt as if we were performing a scene from the proposed sequel to The Lost Boys.

“Sinikka! I called the ambulance, they are on their way; they want us to try to sit him up, and make sure nothing’s blocking his airways.” Ville was at my side, helping to lift Jyrki even though he couldn’t have been much stronger than I was for all of the muscles on his body. Together, we leaned him against the side of the bed; and as Ville anxiously paced, awaiting the ring of the ambulance, I supported Jyrki’s black-haired head and brushed the long strands out of his face. The question of weather we should try to dress Jyrki had been asked - Ville rationalized that they would prefer us not to mess with him so much - but we simply pulled a blanket around his broad shoulders to cover his briefs and the thick wool socks he always wore to bed. I realized I didn’t quite know when he had gotten dressed, when I had left Jyrki’s bed he had still been wrapped in the comforter.

Ville and I had managed to talk our way into sharing the jump seat when the ambulance arrived; normally, one of us would have been left behind. It had been more than slightly unnerving, watching the paramedics push a tube into Jyrki’s nose and connect it to an oxygen tank and squeeze the IV bag after injecting it with some sort of drug to open his airways. We arrived with Jyrki at the hospital, and managed to keep pace with the gurney until it hit the doors labeled ‘Emergency Care’ - and were told by a stern, overweight nurse that we must stay behind in the waiting room.

Let the pacing begin.

I sat with my hands clasped between my knees, wishing I had my cigarettes with me. I wouldn’t have been able to smoke them in the waiting room, but there was a small room off to the left of where I sat where one could spark up. Ville paced back and forth in front of me to the rhythm of “Billie Jean,” the song that played over the speaker - absently, I wondered if he would randomly break out into song and dance. After a while, Ville’s rhythmic pacing grew tiring, and I focused on the badly-dubbed episode of Charlie’s Angles for as long as I could manage before I began to fidget again.

“Do you suppose there’s coffee around here?” I paused and took a sharp breath. “Never mind. I don’t think I could wander around until I find out about Jyrks anyway,” Ville had stopped pacing, and pierced me with his bright green eyes.

“No. Coffee would be an excellent idea. We can’t just sit here and rot,” He turned on his heel and directed the lady behind the counter as to where we would be, and left in search of the nearby cafeteria.

A half an hour of wandering later and Ville and I were pouring ourselves cups of the worst black coffee I had ever drank in a gloomy-looking cafeteria. As I sipped from my cup, I stared absently (I had been very absent since the ambulance ride, apparently) out the window into the gloomy Finnish winter, noting that snow had started to fall yet again. I leaned against the buffet the coffee machine rested on as Ville painstakingly filled his cup - the machine was extremely slow at producing the life-giving liquid. I almost didn’t notice the little redheaded nurse until she was right on top of us.

“Ville,” I tugged on his jacket’s sleeve as the girl stood behind him, waiting for both of our attention.

“You two are with Mr. Linnankivi?” She asked, when Ville had finally turned. He and I exchanged exasperated glances, and I nodded. Good God, it was nearly noon, I hadn’t had a cigarette or a full cup of Joe, and I was in a damned hospital - why did that make other people stupid? Shouldn’t it have been the other way around?

She determined that we really were with him, and led the pair of us down a long, stark-white hallway. I had already seen more of this hospital than I had ever wished to become familiar with, and I could definitely understand why Jyrki hated them so. I placed a hand on the reverse-tinted window and stared in - from what I could see, Jyrki was in his own room, and hooked up to an IV, an oxygen tank, a heart monitor, and some machine that I wasn’t certain the use of; his arms looked as if they were a pincushion full of needles the way the doctors had pricked his arms.

I clutched Ville’s arm in one hand, the coffee in the other as Jyrki’s doctor came out of the room, the door closed behind him and choked off the sound of artificial breathing and the beeping of the heart monitor.

“Good news, you two called us in time to save him - Jyrki was undergoing a severe Asthma attack, one that could have been brought on for any number of reasons.” The way the slimy-looking man used Jyrki’s name made me cringe - like he was talking about some small boy that wasn’t even there. “He’s going to be fine, after a few days of rest, but he’s going to have to be careful about smoke, pet dander, pollen - basically anything that might set him off until we know what it is that does trigger the attacks. Has he had a cough for a long time? Has he complained about shortness of breath?”

I found myself participating in the doctor’s study even though I didn’t really want to - I informed him about Jyrki’s cough and it’s origins in the smoky club, and how the environment he lives in was smoke-filled as well. The doctor frowned as he wrote notes on his clipboard in a manner I took to be condescending, and after a few moments, I stopped contributing.

Jyrki was asleep (I couldn’t tell if it was natural or drug-induced, and I figured it was the latter) when Ville and I finally were allowed to sit with him. The brown-haired man paced as I perched on the edge of the bed, clutching Jyrki’s hand for all it was worth - and wondering why in the hell they had left those ugly socks on him.

“Sini?” Hanna had arrived - funny, I didn’t remember Ville calling her, but he must have at some point - and was offering me a new cup of coffee, and my pack of cigarettes. “They told me he wasn’t going to wake up for a little while, so I brought you two some things.” The tiny sliver of a woman hefted an enormous bag over her shoulder. “I went to Paavo and got some of your homework, we thought you’d want to get it done.”

“Paavo’s here?” I passed the cigarettes to Ville and eagerly drank the coffee she had offered me.

“No, he couldn’t come - said something about classes.” I quirked an eyebrow. Classes, huh? Since when had he started to take classes on Saturday afternoons? Hanna caught the anger that flashed over my face. “He’s probably with Kirsi, am I right?” I winced.

“I think so. God, it’s like I don’t even know him any more,” She handed me the bag as I reached for it, and glanced worriedly at Jyrki while I began to sort through the multitude of books she had brought me. I did have quite a bit of reading to get done, and a paper to finish. “The doctor said it was an asthma attack, one of the worst he’s ever seen.”

Hanna pulled up a chair and sat beside me as I began to work on the paper - the sound of the pen scratching the paper and Ville’s pacing as he drank his coffee were the only sounds in the room aside from the oxygen tank and the heart monitor.

I had written nearly three quarters of the paper before Jyrki even stirred, and Ville sat editing its spelling errors with a red pen when he did finally wake.

Jyrki became aware of his surroundings very slowly, wanted to know where he was and why he was there, and was extremely disgusted when I finally explained it to him. But after witnessing his wheezing sleep, the three of us were more than stern when we explained to him that he was going to stay in bed until he was well again, and leave whenever the doctors told him to, and the black-haired man was too exhausted to do anything except resign himself to his fate.

Three days later I arrived after my last class of the day (the professor had enjoyed the paper I had written on the Quantum theory very much, had called it a masterpiece and had asked if I had Jyrki’s help in writing it, which was rather insulting) to help Jyrki home. His skin looked as if it were ready to slough off at any moment, his eyes were sunken into his head, and he looked quite strange in the leather jacket and jeans Ville had provided for him, but he was back to his normal self (with only a touch of wheeze) as we helped him to the metro.

“So you owe me for the other night,” He murmured into my ear as he sat beside me. Ville smoked a cigarette out the window, and I had been watching him hungrily when Jyrki had spoken and gave a start - for my dark-haired beauty, I was making a concerted effort to quit smoking.

“What do you mean, owe you?” I snapped - quitting was making me more irritable and bitchy than it was worth. “If I remember correctly, you owe me.”

Jyrki grinned wryly and kissed my cheek.

He was going to be the death of me, eventually.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title credit; Simon and Garfunkel
> 
> Finnish-to-English;  
> ei vittun saatana - literally “Fuck Satan,” generally used when things are really fucked up.


	15. Photograph

The tiny apartment Paavo and I shared was crowded with the bodies of the people I loved, people who were preparing to celebrate our graduations. Well, they were here to celebrate Paavo more than myself - after six years at Sibelius Academy, he was to graduate with his Master’s degree; oh, Paavo, Paavo, what a perfect child you are, always better than that little strangely-dressed wretch of a sister you have there. It was enough to make me gag. As far back as I could remember Paavo had been more important than I had because he was older - and my parents made the mistake of planning our births at an interval where every single one of our graduations would fall on the same year, if not the same day.

I stood in the kitchen where I had balanced the ironing board between the counter, the island, and the coffee machine with a cigarette stuck in my mouth, ironing the grand, enormous black robe I was to wear later in the evening. There was a backup of clothing for me to iron - Jyrki’s robe (he was to graduate with high honors and his Master’s degree), Paavo’s robe, their black blazers, the crisp white shirts they were to wear under them, and if I managed to finish all of that, then and only then could I press the little black shirtdress I had found for the occasion.

Life’s a bitch.

With a sigh, I set the iron down and hung my robe on a cabinet, securing the ropes I would wear around its hanger lest Paavo think my robe was his. It probably would have fit him anyway. I gulped down half of a fresh cop of coffee and watched my relatives fuss over the two Masters’ students in the room - my parents had been more impressed that I had managed to snag such a charmer as Jyrki than the fact that I had managed to snag straight A’s through out my College career. My mother had already nearly ripped my head off because of the cigarette in my mouth (and the Bailey’s Irish cream she had caught me sneaking into my coffee earlier in an attempt to deal with her piercing voice), it was apparent she hadn’t grown any fonder of her misfit daughter in my absence.

Paavo and Jyrki’s robes were done in short order and hung in strategic positions - Paavo’s on the jamb above his door and Jyrki’s beside mine in the kitchen.

A woman’s work was never done when her mother was around.

“Why have you stopped ironing?” The woman must have been Hitler in her past life, I swear. My mother was the queen of screeching angry orders at everyone, and nearly always got her way.

“I’m taking a sip of coffee, mum, calm down.” I breathed as my shaking hand poured another cup. She hadn’t let me slow down for a moment since she had roused me that morning at eight, and it was nearly noon. “If I don’t ingest something with caloric value, I may faint.”

“Always whining girl, I thought college would get that out of you. Wouldn’t be the first time I was wrong about you.” She had a face so puckered it seemed she must keep a stash of sour warheads to suck on at random intervals throughout her day, and dark brown hair pulled up so tightly into a bun that it must have cut off the circulation to her brain and caused the vicious tirade that always spewed out of her mouth.

I chose not to shoot back and set to my ironing again, the smoke clenched between my teeth as I carefully pressed the white shirts for Jyrki and Paavo, feeling like Cinderella re-incarnated.

“She’s quite rude, your mother,” A familiar baritone breathed into my ear, his hands on my waist. Jyrki had managed to make a full recovery once we figured out what had triggered his asthma attack - a rat had been living in the apartment he and Ville shared unbeknownst to all of us. It was disgusting, but good to know that I wouldn’t have to quit smoking for the man, which was nearly out of the question altogether due to how irritable I had been for the week Ville and I had pledged not to smoke for Jyrki’s sake.

“She’s delightful.” I hadn’t meant to snap at him, but the stress of the day drove me to it. Jyrki’s lips pressed against the side of my neck, and I was instantly sorry for attempting to gnaw his head off like a crazed Chihuahua. “I’m sorry. I’m in over my head here, Jyrki.”

“I’ve noticed.” I set the iron down on the ironing board, beside Jyrki’s crisp white shirt, before I turned to bury my face in his shirt - fighting the tears that I knew were to come. “It’s ok baby, really. There’s nothing you can do,” I wrapped my arms around his waist and clung to it until I could feel my mother’s stare on my back and could hear her command me to continue my ironing; it was all I could do to refrain from screaming back at her.

Jyrki offered me a freshly lit smoke - which nearly sent me into cardiac arrest, he must have really thought I needed the nicotine to deal with my mother, Jyrki would never have touched a cigarette if it wasn’t a matter of life or death. I muttered my thanks as I took it, and began to iron again with a cup of Joe in one hand. He and I hadn’t a moment alone together since the night before - my parents frowned upon any more physical contact than was proper between a man and a women who were “courting.” I felt like I had suddenly been transported back to the early 1800's.

“What time is it?” My mother was screeching again - if we didn’t hurry up and get dressed that very instant, we all would be less than an hour early for Paavo’s graduation. I sighed through the cigarette as I smoothed the last crease out of the full-skirted little black dress I had procured for the evening, thankful for the support of Jyrki’s enormous hand on the small of my back.

“Come on, I’ll help you get into that dress.” I turned to give Jyrki a look which I hoped clearly said ‘are you kidding me, they think I’ll get pregnant if I stare at you long enough, do you really think they’ll let us be in the same room together for an extended period of time?’ in so many words, and took a massive gulp of my rapidly cooling coffee. He lifted an eyebrow, as if to say ‘I see your point,’ and settled with his hands at my waist again, watching warily as I began to flatten the garishly yellow ‘Salutatorian’ sash which I had been provided only days ago (when it became clear that studying could be mixed with partying to achieve the status; translation: the faculty told me I had the second-best grades in my class. Whoopee).

After a moment, I realized that I had completely run out of things to iron and therefore had nothing to keep my hands busy. I also found (much to my greatest relief) that my mother was walking out the door with Paavo and my father on each arm, shooting snide comments which implied my virginity would be questioned if I was late to watch my brother walk.

“Want to help me get ready now?” Jyrki was all to happy to comply - but appeared crestfallen when I informed him that getting ready was the only act he would participate in before Paavo’s ceremony.

Paavo’s ceremony was to be held at thirteen hundred hours on his campus, in one of the auditoriums (there were a few, it was a fucking music school). After his commencement, Jyrki and I were to rush across town in order to reach ours an hour prior to the ceremony in order to prepare. Undergrad students like myself walked first, at sixteen hundred hours, and Graduate students like Jyrki immediately afterwards. It was basically the same ceremony, with a single speech separating the two.

Thick fingers painstakingly fastened the row of buttons which ran up the side of the black dress as I arranged the collar just so about my neck - popped, but not in an obnoxious “I’m a pastel polo shirt” manner - as to compliment the strand of bright pearls which hugged my throat.

“Darling, you look fantastic,” Jyrki nearly gaped as he spoke, watching as I very delicately tied the small sash belt around the tight waist of the little black dress and gently turned up the cuffs of the elbow-length sleeves to fasten them with a pair of pearl cufflinks. I thought it added a very sophisticated touch to an otherwise bland garment, the pearls. The black-haired man helped by smoothing the dress over my hips as I made an attempt to swirl my hair back into a sleek chignon.

“Oh, stop fussing you, if we don’t get there on time my mother is going to curse me for eternity.” The hands on my hips turned me none-too-gently and my lips met those of my lover’s with hurried intensity. After a few moments of heavy petting, Jyrki’s hands moved as if to grip a handful of my hair and forced me to pull away.

“Jyrki! We’re going to be late! And you‘re going to mess up my hair!” Regardless of what I had just said, I grasped the sides of his face between my palms and planted butterfly kisses on his cheeks and nose before I released him.

I carefully folded our robes as Jyrki turned off the boom box he had turned on after my mother’s departure - I groaned at the loss of Bruce Springsteen as I placed Jyrki’s long black robe and his medals in the bottom of the white paper bag. I folded my robes along with the ropes, sashes, medals and the hood I had been given (Jyrki’s was attached to his robe for some reason - it was the same one he had worn for his Undergraduate commencement, he had said). My black-haired lover seized the handles of the bag in one hand and my free hand in the other as we left the apartment.

“Wait.” I paused at his command, wondering what the fuck he was reaching for in his collar; did a flea bite him or something? Was I going to have to have the apartment fumigated for bugs? Where the fuck would I live if I had to do that over the damned summer?

Before I snapped out of my little revelry, Jyrki’s hands guided a long black cord around my neck - I felt the cold silver of the Fleur De Lis nestle between my breasts under the dress I wore.

“What’s all this?” I asked, pulling the hefty charm from beneath the dress, holding it in my palm like it might break if I tightened my fingers over it.

“I haven’t taken that off since I was twelve. I want you to wear it for me for a while.” I knew what that meant. Jyrki wasn’t one to toss the L word around , he claimed it would loose its meaning if he did and expected me to settle for synonyms such as ‘adore,’ ‘cherish,’ and ‘idolize,’ but the Fleur De Lis in my hand symbolized something deeper than that.

He didn’t give me much time to think about it as he dragged me down the stairs by the hand, and into the Rail train before I could even light a cigarette to soothe my shaking hands.

“I’m going on tour, Sini.” I didn’t manage to suppress the gasp of horror and nearly dropped my cigarette down the front of my dress.

“W-What? You’re kidding, right?” He couldn’t just up and leave. Not for the summer. Not now. “This is just a funny joke. You’re so clever, Jyrki.”

“Sinikka. Listen to me. I’m not kidding.” He had somehow secured both of my hands in his, leaving me speechless as I attempted to recover the precariously dangling cigarette from near disaster. “We’re leaving in mid-June.”

“When did you decide this?” I managed through my teeth, trying to manage what I hoped was a cold stare without tears.

“Yesterday after the show.”

“Where the vittun was I?” I snarled, finally managing to pull one hand free to pluck the smoke form between my lips.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know I needed to consult you about my life.”

“A head’s up would have been lovely, Jyrki.” I hissed, glaring at the other passengers in our rail car to avoid glaring at him.

“I want you to come with me.”

“With four other men in a confined tour bus?” He nodded brightly, Jyrki’s face seemed almost excited at the prospect. “That’s going to be so much fun, exactly what I want to do with my summer.”

“Hanna will go, because Ville and his new band are going.”

“Let me think about it, Jyrki. Now was not an optimum time to ask.”

We arrived at the Academy just in time to hear the first speech - and then had to sit for the ordeal that was a Sibelius Academy Graduation. I wished I had brought a pair of headphones, it was very tiring to hear a little blurb about how much better each person was than me; and there were better things for me to think about than the announcer’s bland drabble. Much more important issues weighed on my mind, more important than my mother’s comments on how dull that girl looked, or how that boy still had creases in his robes.

On May Nineteenth, Nineteen Ninety-One, at sixteen hundred hours, I walked onto the grounds of my college as a the Salutatorian of my class, summa cum laude. At nineteen hundred hours, I walked off the campus as a Graduate student pursing a master’s degree. A woman in love with a man who was about to leave to go on a “tour” of Europe she didn’t quite understand.

A woman who was prepared to ride on the tour bus through the entire fucking European Union.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title credit; Def Leppard
> 
> Finnish-to-English;  
> vittun - fuck or an equivalent


	16. Chapter 16

One bag. It was all Jyrki had said I could bring; I saw his one bag and raised him two. Two pieces of luggage - technically one piece of luggage and a carry on plus my purse. So three bags. Only one bag was actually luggage though, so I was under the impression that I had done well for myself, especially since I had a plethora of polo’s, a cache of chinos and a burden of beige. All color-coordinated of course, the bright red bag was an obsessive-compulsive overload, even to me. One piece of luggage to check, one carry on and a purse. That was it, Jyrki would have my head if I managed to pack any more!

But I had managed to stick to one bag, and for that, I was damned proud of myself. Pop the champagne and smoke a cigar, Sinikka managed to be something less than a nuisance and something more than anonymous! I usually fell under either extreme.

I ran a brush over my teeth as I wandered around the apartment I shared with my brother, triple-checking to see if I had forgotten anything at all - which would have been a detriment to the entire trip. God forbid Miss Sini, the perfectionist, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder poster child, forgot anything, it would spell disaster for the rest of the trip! I could see it now - if I had to stop for anything, the boys would probably ridicule me ruthlessly for the next two months, even if it was a damned toothbrush. With that thought in mind, I carefully stashed my toothbrush in the quilted, vibrantly-patterned duffel bag which was my carry-on piece. I fastened a string of pearls around my neck and lit a new cigarette while I answered the door.

“Are you ready? Have you packed everything? You haven’t forgotten anything, right?” Jyrki Linnankivi and all of his enormously tall glory strode through my door, firing questions like Clint Eastwood fired his revolver - ask questions first, wait for answers later. It was typical of the black-haired man. “Well?” I lifted an eyebrow and pointed to the neat stack of bags beside the door he had just walked through. “Oh.”

“See, Professor Ankelo was right. We benefit most from observation.” There was only a hint of smugness in my smile as I corrected him, shouldering the textbook-sized quilted backpack which would serve as my purse and the duffel. Jyrki’s huge hand pulled the handle from the bright red piece of luggage before he raced down the stairs ahead of me (I definitely had the heavier bag, that duffel was full of casette tapes, books and the like to keep me busy on a plane trip, sitting still for long periods without cigarettes and coffee was not my forte). The horn of the black van blared - Archie was eager to get the graffitied (really, it was just a black van covered in haphazardly spray-painted red stencils, but it was the most gothic thing on wheels in Greater Helsinki) monstrosity to the airport in time for our flight. Jyrki ignored my excited chatter about the trip at hand as a method to hurry me along - that much I realized, but his sulking silence was enough to make me pout as I smoked what I believed was the last cigarette I would get before I was bundled on a plane headed to Madrid, Spain.

Less than a month ago, my lovely boyfriend had dropped a bomb on me on the day of our graduation - he and his little project of a band were going on a little tour for a little bit of summer. Only for a little while, he said. Well, a short time to him was two months to me - two months which ended just before the start of my studies toward a Master’s Degree in Organic Chemistry.

Sinikka Helle Lotjonen had turned into a ride-or-die chick somewhere along the line; I had missed the transformation myself but it had happened. I had never thought that I would be the one to pack up all (almost all, I had a pretty hefty piece of luggage) of my belongings and follow a man through the entire fucking European Union. Hell, I had even painted my nails a shade of navy (the closest color to black which would ever adorn my nails) to commemorate the event which was our departure for the tour.

I allowed Jyrki to wrap his arms around my shoulders after I settled myself into his lap in the not-so-spacious back seat of the dingy van; and nearly screeched along with the tires as Archie’s lead foot smashed down on the gas pedal.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Baize looked like he belonged in a biker gang - he could lead the fucking thing, he was so rough-and-tumble looking - but he had the most sensitive stomach of anyone I had ever met. I shifted slightly so that if he did decide to vomit, Jyrki would end up blocking the vile concoction from ever reaching me. The boyfriend/shield tactic was one of my favorites.

“I need a cigarette,” Spiky-haired Jussi was attacking the cockatoo-like apparatus atop his head with more gel than necessary, he was seated between Jyrki and Baize with the tub of “wax gel” between his bouncing knees.

“Me too,” Timo, a shaggy-haired youth, reached back from the passenger seat to scoop a generous glomp of the gel for his own hair. Geeze, one would think we were on our way to a gig right that very second.

“Thirds.” Archie commented as he swerved around a roundabout.

“If I hear one more complaint I’m going to kill you all,” I muttered as I sent my cigarette butt out the window with a well-aimed flick.

“Oh, feisty.” Jyrki shot Jussi an uncharacteristic glare with his heart-melting icy blues, a look of such intensity I felt it behind my back. Ignoring the look of fury Jyrki transferred to me, I pulled out my pack of cigarettes and allowed Jussi and Timo to each take one; Jussi lit his from the single flame of my lighter and transferred the heat to Timo’s smoke like a professional. We smoked in silence for the rest of the drive, the occasional grunt as Archie deftly avoided traffic accidents and attempted to break the sound barrier on the way across Helsinki.

“So what is Ville’s new band?” I asked out the side of my mouth as Jyrki and I crawled out of the van at the baggage check on the sidewalk of the airport - surprised it still had all of its tires.

“They call it H.I.M., it’s the same shit, just a different line up.” The tall, black-haired man sighed as he passed my the bright red bag which was easily identifiable in a sea of black. I was always the sore thumb, it was simply something I had gotten used to over the years.

“I see,” Literally, I did, as the boys formed some sort of conveyor-belt line involving bag-passing up to the baggage check, Ville Valo crawled out of a bright yellow taxi several cars away from us. From that far away I could tell that Jyrki’s roommate and my long-time confidante was completely hung over, he was just that haggard looking - dark sunglasses, frizzy, unwashed curls and a haphazard-looking ensemble. “Why didn’t you two just ride together?” I asked Jyrki as Ville approached.

“Who two?”

“You and Ville,” I sucked on the third fag of the day like it was a situation of life and death.

“Oh, right. Well, we wouldn’t have all fit. Would have had to leave Jussi behind or something.” It was sweet that Jyrki would never have dreamed of leaving me behind - he had practically shit himself the day I decided I would accompany he and the boys. “We need to hurry,”

“Since when do you care about being late?”

“Have you ever been on an international flight, Sini?” I tilted my head inquisitively, as if to say “what a stupid question, my love,” but settled on something a little less hurtful to state out loud. It was funny how often I found myself editing bone-cutting quips into motherly chiding with Jyrki; and it needed to stop. I was definitely not his mother (oh no, she had some strange hair, that woman) and he definitely hadn’t fallen in love with me for my ninja-like skills in self-censorship.

“No, Jyrki, we went over this. I’ve never been on a plane.” Ville and his “boys” had joined the gothic hodgepodge which was The 69 Eyes, checking baggage like pros. One would almost think that they all had done this before.

“I knew that.” I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at him as I stomped on smoke number three and lit fag number four - try as he might, Jyrki would never be able to store every little conversation we had away in his expansive, chemistry-filled brain, especially not when the blood necessary to run that organ was quickly pooling elsewhere.

“Ei Vittun, you’re going to die of lung cancer young lady!” Surprisingly, it wasn’t the anti-smoking Jyrki who lectured me, but spiky-haired Jussi, who swiped the cig from my overly-relaxed hand. “I’ll take it off your hands!”

“Hey! You little brat!” I didn’t bother with an attempt to snatch the thing back - Jussi had already “danced” away (as was his way, he was a quick little bastard) and there was no telling where those lips had been in the past hours (I had once seen him kiss a shifty-looking broad on a street corner on a dare from the men, and I was more than certain she had been in possession of at least eighteen different kinds of lip fungi).

An impossible amount of luggage spewed from the back of the van; bags of assorted shades of black were produced from nowhere, five (?!) guitar cases, and a mysterious-looking duffel bag that just might have been big enough for Jussi to fit into if I decided to check him if he got too annoying. I considered the though as I watched the boy jump around with my cigarette in his hand, and it became more and more attractive as he began to look more and more like a chattering monkey with a hand full of shit.

“Kultaseni?” Jyrki’s large hand pressed against the small of my back as his lips pressed against my earrings (Hanna had[ managed to get me to pierce them again - I could wear large diamond-looking earrings in the first holes and pearls in the second holes, or vice versa, or dangly ones in the first hole and something interesting in the second, it was a wonderful thing!) as he murmured in my ear. “Why are you looking so cruelly at Jussi?”

“Cruelly, you say?” I felt a devious smile twitch at his lips through my earlobe (who would have thought earlobes were so sensitive to expression), and knew my smile mirrored his as I took a drag of my fag.

“What’s on your mind,” It was a sing-song-y threat, almost; if I didn’t tell him what I was thinking, he would ravage me until I did, which was almost enough to keep my lips sealed… if we hadn’t been in a public place.

“I was just considering if Jussi could fit in that duffel there… we could check him as luggage and all sleep soundly on the flight. Or perhaps we could stick him in a cage and pass him off as a monkey,” The black-haired man clutched my waist as he began to laugh uproariously, gaining startled looks from his overly-gothic band mates.

“Oi! We’re going to be late for the flight for fuck’s sake!”

Which set the entire group (we had been joined by Ville’s sorry-looking group while I was attempting to curse Jussi to the coldest depths of hell or something) into a spastic half-seizure in an attempt to get to the check-in table in time.

“Oh, settle down. I’ll be checking us in at the counter.” I didn’t think any of the boys had heard me in the race to check all of our bags as quickly as possible, but I made my way to the Finnair cashier - a bright young woman with a broad smile greeted me, and then proceeded to give me such a difficult time that I finally gave up and wandered back to the disorganized chaos outside.

“You aren’t done yet?”

“Yes we are! Everybody inside!” It was like a preschool teacher making an attempt to control a bunch of Neanderthals - Jyrki looked as if he was about to be swept up in the “crowd” (of nearly ten men) which charged to the counter I had just turned away from.

Minutes later, I waited in line with my shoes off to be patted down by a burly-looking woman for shivs and the like - because I appeared to be more of a criminal than the ten men dressed in chains and leather that I traveled with. It was horrible - I was passed through a large x-ray machine and figured a full body-cavity check was next in line before the people let me go.

“God, let’s just get going,” I murmured in response to Jyrki’s exclamations of disgust at how the security had singled me out of the group. “They were just doing their job.”

“Because you look so suspicious!” Jyrki wrapped his arm around my shoulder as he grumbled, we trailed behind the rest of the rowdy bunch until we got into the gate - and were immediately ushered onto the plane by a disgruntled-looking stewardess who informed us of just how close we had cut it.

“We have to sit here for five hours?” The seat was no wider than my ass - which wasn’t very wide at all; in response, Jyrki faked a smile and settled his head on my breasts.

I could only look out the window, and hope the plane would land before something horrible happened - like Jussi swinging from the ceiling or the pianist of Ville’s band fainted from fright (I could hear the man called Burton hyperventilating into his barf bag somewhere behind me). I managed to pull my cassette player from my purse around Jyrki - who was already fucking asleep! - and hit play. Perhaps Talking Heads was a little too upbeat to help me fall asleep, but I found myself humming along with “Psycho Killer” before I could consider changing tapes. It was going to be a long flight…

Oh! Peanuts!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title credit; Talking Heads.
> 
> Finnish-to-English;  
> ei vittun


	17. Band on the run

Good Mother of God and all things Holy! The fucking plane must have bounced eighty-three times upon landing - this pilot, I had decided, had no fucking clue about what he was doing (it also turned out that Burton, Bazie and I should have sat together with all of the barf bags on the plane between us, the turbulence we hit over France did nothing for my stomach).

“Get me off this tin can,” I clutched Jyrki’s arm for support; he had been kind enough to take my duffel bag from me, shouldering the girly-looking thing with his own bag. Behind us, I could hear Burton and Bazie (my new best friends!) reiterating the sentiment. “That was horrible, Jyrki!”

“You know, I only think you puked because you needed a cigarette. Look at you, you’re all shaky.” The tall, black-haired man grabbed my arm and held it out from my body so he could watch my twitching hand with a wry grin. Damned man, he knew everything. How was it that I was the one suffering from withdrawal symptoms when Ville fucking Valo was just striding off the plane like he did the flying internationally thing all the time? I tried to remember to ask him what his secret was.

As it were, we all rushed to the baggage claim - while Ville, Jussi and I rushed outside for a hasty, shared smoke before we descended upon the carousel. My bright red bag was easy to find (thus why I chose it - sometimes, Sini does make smart decisions!), but the nondescript black pieces the boys had brought were not so. Jyrki kept pulling bags off that definitely weren’t his, and he grumbled about his ineptness as he threw them back on the carousel. Finally, everyone had a bag each (three, in my case, but this has already been discussed). Everyone but Jussi. And he was not happy about it.

“Are you kidding me! Ei Vittun Saatana, where is my goddamn bag?!” The little boy looked more like a monkey than usual - an extremely disgruntled monkey, ready to sling dung at anything and anyone nearby. I sighed as I watched him hop around, checking bags that obviously weren’t his, just to be certain the airline hadn’t somehow disguised it.

“Come on, let’s go up to the counter.” Jyrki guided the much shorter boy by a firm grip on his shoulder blade. With another sigh, I traipsed with the rest of the men out to the loading area, listening to the rapid Spanish all around me with rapt attention - it wasn’t like I understood much at all, but my knowledge of French allowed me to catch the drift of what people were saying. One person was complaining about a similar problem to ours, one wanted to hit up a tapas bar - whatever that was.

Ville offered me a light for my cigarette, and I accepted as I watched Jussi and Jyrki - two very recognizable figures - stride up to the concierge desk through the clear windows of the building.

“Could this trip have started any worse?” Ville cocked an eyebrow at me, so I took a deep breath of smoke and elaborated. “The last thing I want to deal with is an angry Jussi - the kid’s a maniac!” I sighed yet again (I found I sighed a lot around the guys, it had something to do with exasperation).

“On the contrary, dear, I think this trip is going to be fantastic!” I spared him a sympathetic smile - really, all the booze must have gone to his head for him to think like that - and watched as Jyrki and a very dejected-looking Jussi made their way out the terminal building. Jyrki’s arms wrapped around my shoulders the instant he strolled out the door; I could have sworn he was attempting to squeeze all of the cancer-causing (according to him) smoke from my lungs.

“Well? What of the bag?” I inquired, re-filling my lungs with the toxic version of air I so preferred. The black-haired man at my back sighed and laid his head atop of mine, obviously surrendering the floor to the puffed-up porcupine that was Jussi.

“It’s headed to fucking Egypt or something. Kyrpa otsassa, my favorite drumsticks were in there!” The spiky-headed boy seemed to inflate as he grew angrier and angrier as he dwelt on his lost luggage - I tossed my pack of Marlboros at his head, and was startled when it stuck in his spikes. Usually, Jussi would catch the thing, he had the reflexes of a fox. He plucked the box from his hair and glared at me (I thought his dark gray eyes would light me on fire) as he pulled a cigarette out. “We’re to come back tomorrow and get it. Saatanan runkkari!” His swearing made me raise an eyebrow as Jyrki caught the pack of cigarettes for me, and pocketed them.

“Hey! Those are mine!” Jyrki simply shrugged as I frisked him - I searched each pocket for the pack, and found nothing. How the hell had he caused them to disappear? I glared up at him, wondering if Jussi’s fire-igniting skills had transferred to me somehow; they hadn’t, but my powers of observation persevered, I caught Ville grinning like an idiot behind Jyrki’s back before he made an attempt to straighten his face. Before I could take off after him, Jyrki had folded me up in his arms and held me against his chest as I squirmed desperately.

“Fine, fine. I give up.” I let myself go limp, leaning against Jyrki for support. “So are we all just going to stand here? Where are we going?” Nobody had seen fit to explain our travel situation to us, and when I had asked Jyrki had informed me we would take a magic carpet through Europe; the image of ten men and little old me crowded onto an old shaggy carpet in a carpool lane somewhere on the autobahn had me in stitches for hours.

“I dunno where it is,” One of Ville’s bandmates, Mikko, who I remembered meeting quite a long time ago, shrugged his enormous shoulders. The man was corpulent, there was no two ways about it - he had hit the alcohol a little too hard and the gym too lightly. He ran a hand over his bald head. “Seppo said he would be here.”

“Seppo said, Seppo said. I’ve heard quite enough about this old man, Gas,” Ville’s voice was a vicious bite at “Gas,” who stuffed both hands into his pockets and nearly began to pout.

“Oh, don’t bitch Ville,” Archie smacked reedy Ville on the back with a meaty hand, a well mannered smile crossed his face. “I’m sure someone will show,”

Just as Archie began to reassure Ville, an enormous black SUV streaked by in the fast lane around the airport, followed by two identical, out-of-place SUV‘s; we all stood in stunned silence as our ride completely passed us by.

“Seppo?” Ville asked Gas, sounding exasperated.

“Seppo.” Gas nodded, looking quite vindicated. I, however, seemed to be the only one who was concerned that the driver had plowed right past the most gothic-looking group ever seen in Madrid.

“Uh, guys? Shouldn’t he have stopped?” But Jussi - bagless Jussi, lightweight Jussi - had already taken off running down the loading area, past little old ladies trying to get their cat- and hat-boxes into bright yellow taxi’s and natives who looked like they might have shot him if there weren’t anti-gun laws in Europe. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to make the driver stop or if he was just making an attempt to follow him to his destination - the former wouldn’t have been so effective, though; short Jussi, easily enveloped in a crowd Jussi.

“Now what?” Jyrki’s deep rumble nearly startled me. The entire group looked to Gas, who shrugged, picked up his bag by the handles, and crossed the lane of traffic on the crosswalk to wait at a partition in the middle of the two lanes - he glanced over his shoulder and shrugged at the group of gaping people.

Sure enough, the first enormous car swung around the corner and came to a screeching halt right in front of the second car - which nearly smashed into the back of the first. I lifted an eyebrow - I was going to travel in that, with five men and drivers who didn’t understand the concept of inertia? As I debated weather or not I should follow the rest of the group, Jyrki dragged me closer to the screaming death machines by the hand as Jussi jogged up behind the convoy - barely even out of breath.

“You chased it around the entire terminal?” I asked, eyes wide.

“Yep.”

“Was this fun for you?”

“Yep.”

“Are you in the least bit tired?”

“Nope.”

Oh God, I was done for. He was going to bounce around the SUV all day, every day. It was all I could do to keep from swearing under my breath at him, and duct-taping him down to a chair somewhere (perhaps on the roof).

“Come on, kultaseni, get in!” Somewhere in the twenty steps from the edge of the sidewalk of the loading area to the side of the SUV’s, someone had lifted my duffel bag and unceremoniously shoved it into the trunk of the vehicle with all of the guitars and luggage.

Once again, I settled down onto Jyrki’s lap - I couldn’t help but wonder if I would ever merit my own seat in the car, but Jyrki’s lap was comfortable enough to dissuade the thought. Instead of making an attempt to burrow in between Jyrki and Ville (who sat in the middle), I nestled my head between Jyrki’s chin and collarbone. His fingers entwined themselves in a fistful of soft blond hair as he murmured sweet nothings into my ear. It was all well and good, but I wanted my cigarettes back, and was too absorbed in wishing for them to really notice the “thrust” of what he was saying - and it was definitely a thrust and naught else.

“Jyrki, you pig!” I playfully slapped his shoulder, as hard as I could in the narrow swing space between the seat of the driver and the black-haired man’s thick chest.

“What?” A wry grin was plastered across his face, his icy blue eyes glittered mischievously.

“In a car filled with your friends?” I hissed as quietly as I could, pulling on a long black lock of hair as if it would help reign him in.

“They could give two shits,”

“But I give lots of shits! Stop it!” A moment passed - I seemed to have lost the staring contest which had ensued when I wrapped my arms around his thick torso. Jyrki wasn’t thick like my brother was thick, nor was he thick like my father was thick - muscle existed underneath a thin layer of fat. I liked that he wasn’t a body builder or anything of the sort, it gave him more time to spend with me.

“So, uh, where are we headed?” Timo sounded ashamed to ask the question from the backseat, but I was glad he had asked rather than me - I wouldn’t have been able to stand the ridicule. As it were, Timo gained a set of disbelieving stares, and an ass load of curses. Jyrki’s deep, rumbling laugh tickled my cheek as I listened for the answer.

“The gig, dumbass!” Archie answered from the front seat - he had turned around in his seat to join in the cajoling of poor Timo (who had turned bright red, as was his tendency).

“I know that, molopaa! I want to know what the name of the place is!” I shifted in Jyrki’s lap as he pressed a bottle of black nail polish into my hand, taking his hand in mine as I gripped the bottle between my knees. As I drew the brush from the little bottle and began on Jyrki’s naked thumbnail, a brace of hands appeared in front of my face.

The brush slipped from Jyrki’s thumb down the side of his hand and down my leg.

“Ei, vittun! Get your hands out of here, ass holes!” With his spare hand, Jyrki shoved Jussi, Timo and Archie aside as Ville giggled through a cigarette (which I envied him for - some wanker had stolen my pack of smokes) while he stayed well clear of Jyrki’s well-aimed pinches. He knew almost as well as I how adept Jyrki was with his pinching - he had seen the aftermath of drunken nights displayed on my arms all too often.

“Look at this mess,” I seized Jyrki’s hand again and began painting anew. By the time I had finished one hand, the driver (who still didn’t understand how long it took for this vehicle to stop) had come to a halt behind a shabby-looking building - unpainted concrete block surrounded a door that looked like it might have belonged in a prison.

Well this looked promising.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title credit; Paul McCartney and Wings
> 
> Finnish-to-English;  
> ei vittun sastana - literally “Fuck Satan,” generally used when things are really fucked up.  
> kyrpa otsassa - literally “to have a dick on the forehead,” used when someone’s been screwed or is really pissed.  
> saatanan runkkari - literally “Satan’s a wanker,” but considered much more offensive.  
> kultaseni - sweetheart  
> molopaa - dickhead  
> ei, vittun - ah, fuck!


	18. The show must go on

Jyrki literally expelled me from his lap as the SUV ground to a halt behind the derelict-looking pub (apparently it was called El Vampiro), it was all I could do to keep from turning around and stalking out of the place as I walked into the dressing room with the quilted duffel slung over my shoulder. Really, this was horrible; the table had disease floating on it! I could see them! Quickly, I searched out the paper towels and a bottle of Windex and sprayed down the vanity and the seat in front of it before I set up my little “station.”

Officially, I was on tour as the resident stylist - of both of the bands. Strange, since if I had my way, they would all have been wearing a rainbow of bright polo’s, khaki and boat shoes; it had been the only way for Jyrki to get the “powers that be” to let me accompany him. It meant that on one side of the duffel bag I carried I kept my cassettes and books (busy-work for plane rides and long drives), and on the other I kept tons of black makeup, a bag of silver studs (and the pliers with which to install them), a brace of maroon, navy, black and white bandannas, and a bag of silver safety pins in assorted sizes. Truly, the split was more like 1:4, with the hair dryer, brush, tub of industrial-strength hair gel and the black makeup. I began to lay these things on the countertop, plugged in the hair dryer into the nearby outlet.

“My first victim better bring me cigarettes, else the loot of you are going to look really stupid tonight,” I raised an eyebrow at the 69 Eyes boys; none of them seemed very eager to subject themselves to my nicotine-less wrath. After a few moments (and a quiet exchange between Ville and himself), Jyrki grumbled his way forward with my missing Marlboros and an ash tray. Jussi trailed behind him with the suitcase of “goodies” - it was filled with an assortment of leathers for the boys concerts, belts, jackets, vests, pants, gloves, the works - which he smashed down on the table and unzipped for me. A quick search brought out a clinking bag of silver - an assortment of rings, - an assortment of buckle-less belts, and a shoebox of sunglasses.

I mussed up the top of Jyrki’s hair - it was easy enough with hairspray - and ringed his ice blue eyes with eyeliner; I barely managed to keep him from kissing my hands off. Around his neck I placed a necklace of what looked like a Catholic Rosary, I slipped a pair of fingerless gloves over his hands and a few chunky silver chains around his wrists. I directed him to stand, and slung a pair of belts - one studded with a plain buckle and one plain black leather with an enormous Jack Daniel’s buckle around the waist of his leather pants, ignoring his grumbles about not holding up his pants. After I tied a red bandanna around the leg of his pants and presented him with a pair of dark sunglasses, Jyrki placed a brief kiss on my lips and on each cheek before he surrendered his place to Baize.

Baize seemed wary of my makeup brushes as I tried to add a touch of black eyeliner around his eyes; he shied away from my hands like a scared child. Finally, I gave up, and attacked his hair with the can of hairspray, giving him an overly-tousled look for revenge. I stuck a pair of necklaces around his neck - one was a chunky chain, the other a thin silver chain with a skull and crossbones hanging from it. His ears were pierced, so I replaced the bland silver balls in them with thicker hoops. I handed him a set of rings for as many fingers as he would put them on - three on one hand, two on the other - and another thick silver chain for his wrist. Around his other wrist, I tied a navy bandanna, and handed him a single studded belt with a skull and crossbones belt buckle. He took a leather jacket and began attaching studs to it as Archie took his spot.

The man looked so much like a biker-gang leader it was ridiculous. He was wearing dark sunglasses and wouldn’t allow me to put any eyeliner on him. Rolling my eyes (how dare two men in a row ignore my guidance!) I tied a black bandanna around the top of his head, over the tops of his ears. A stud-covered leather vest and a few rings later and he was good to go, he relinquished his seat to Timo.

Timo’s hair required gel and a hair dryer to set the thick goo. He was one of the few who would let me do his eyeliner, too, so I went “all out” and added black eyeshadow as well (a “tasteful” amount - if anyone could call black eyeshadow tasteful to begin with. With a new cigarette in my mouth, I cut the sleeves off of Timo’s shirt around his arms, deaf to his protests on the matter, and provided him with a nice leather vest (which I hope didn’t match Archie’s too closely). Around his wrists I wrapped yet another chunky silver chain and a leather cuff, and a faux-rosary which I had thought interesting. He refused to wear rings, so I tucked a white bandanna into his belt, pushed an additional studded belt (with an elaborate seatbelt-style belt buck) into his hands and shooed him away.

Jussi plopped down in his place; and immediately I started to revive his deflating spiked mess of hair. He and Jyrki were discussing the set-list with the rest of the well-styled band as I worked with the hairdryer, cutting off all speech for minute-long bursts. I splattered eyeliner and -shadow about his face with abandon - Jussi had no discretion, he actually would rub his eyes with his fists before going onstage for that particular “just been beaten up” look he desired so. As a drummer, he couldn’t wear rings, so I slid a pair of mismatched arm warmers up his thin forearms, with a thick leather cuff over one to hide the girly-looking skull on it.

“Give me your shirt.”

“What?”

“Give me the shirt you will be wearing on stage.” Jussi looked startled but did as he was told - I took the Texas Terri shirt he begrudgingly put in my hands; the look of horror spread as I cut the sleeves and the sides of the shirt off - right down to the hem line which held the shirt together at the bottom. I handed him back the nearly side-less shirt.

“You… you just turned my Terri shirt into a poncho! Ei, vittun woman!” I snipped the scissors beneath his nose, extremely close to the skin.

“You will wear it and you will like it, boy! I was going to do it to Jyrki’s shirt, but he said no.” I smiled over Jussi’s spiked-up hair at Jyrki, who had been scrutinizing my every move from a stool quite near to the vanity I worked in front of. Then, I tied a red bandanna about Jussi’s neck before I let him go - and surrendered myself to Jyrki’s waiting arms.

“God this job isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” I murmured into his shoulder, making certain I held my cigarette as far away as possible from his hairspray-infused hair. However much I wanted him to get a hair cut, I didn’t want him going on stage looking like he had made a failed attempt at using his hair like a wet blanket to put out a fire. It simply wouldn’t do.

“But you’re with me,” His voice was much closer to my ear than I had expected. After a few moments of smoke-filled kisses (the kind Jyrki only put up with because he loved me so much and couldn’t argue the point I had made once about my smoking being nothing compared to the clubs he preformed in), I felt eyes on my back, and turned to face them.

“What? I’m not going to style you all, you’re out of luck unless you want to look exactly like them or exactly like me. That’s all I can do,” I explained to Ville, who regarded me with the most ridiculous pair of lost-puppy eyes I had ever seen (barring Jyrki’s).

“I just want some eyeliner, ma’am. Please?” With a sigh, I reached over to grab the stick from the vanity’s counter - leaving my butt in Jyrki’s lap, - and sat up, beckoning Ville closer as I perched on top of Jyrki on a stool. Very precarious - I could feel that if we had been less sober, the position wouldn’t have worked out well at all. Ville leaned in ever so slightly, and with perfect balance I managed to rim his bright-green peepers in a manner similar to how I had done Jyrki’s - suitable for a front man who needed to make cat’s eyes at the audience all night in order to piss off his girlfriend in an interesting plot to eventually achieve make-up sex. Well, that’s how I figured it was.

My stomach gurgled, and I looked down at it as if to ask what it wanted; I was astounded to find that nearly everyone in the room had a tumbler of vodka - except me! A few quick glances brought my eyes to the glasses and the nearly-empty bottle, and I vacated Jyrki’s lap to make a beeline for it (why are they called bee lines anyway? I wasn’t meandering about the room, I was headed as straight as the crow flies, ignoring the bodies in my way) reaching out like a newborn with both hands. Instead of grabbing the glass, I snatched the remains of the bottle from the table, and cradled it in my arms as I made my way back to Jyrki.

“You want some?” I asked my black-haired beauty, as I unscrewed the cap and lifted the bottle to my lips.

“Not after witnessing that,” He growled as I took a deep swig.

“Oh shush, I’ve seen you do much worse,” A grin spread across that beautiful face of his, and I stood on my tiptoes to plant a kiss on the tip of his nose. Even sitting on a stool he was taller than me. I felt his palm fall onto the top of my head and commence the back-and-forth motion of mussing up my hair, and fell into his chest with a new breath of smoke as he chuckled at the sentiment.

Someone had turned Sisters of Mercy on in the background of the room in preparation for the show - everyone had a different ritual they would do pre-show to make them feel better about themselves - and Jyrki hummed the tune, sending shivers down my spine with the deep rumbling of his voice. For a moment, I snuggled with him, reflecting on how lucky I was; before duty pulled us apart once more.

“Sin? I have… oh, ok. Here, this is your backstage pass -” The frightened-looking mouse of a man had stumbled his way in from outside, and was obviously associated with management. Begrudgingly, I pulled myself away from Jyrki to listen to the man’s tirade of what was acceptable behavior backstage - while sipping vodka straight from the bottle.

“Uh-huh. Gotcha. Thanks for that.” I snatched the laminated piece of paper on a lanyard from his fingers and hung it around my neck - marveling at how bitchy I had managed to come off as - and turned back to bury my face in Jyrki’s chest; I didn’t want to miss a single beat of his humming. He had moved from humming deep in his throat to singing the chorus under his breath, and I positioned myself just so that I could hear the lyrics.

“Hey now, hey now now. Sing this corrosion to me,” I nestled my ear closer to his lips, happy to listen, as he played with the collar of my polo - pushing the string of the lanyard beneath the Kelly green fabric just right. I lit a new cigarette and left the now-empty bottle on the vanity next to where my tools had been (someone had very unceremoniously dumped them all right back into my duffel bag, which I would now have to re-organize), watching the boys perform their various rituals with a smile on my face.

Jyrki’s was obvious - he liked a good cuddle before he had to go sing. Archie and Timo sat in the corner, adding more studs to their clothing. Baize was playing air guitar to the solo in the song Jyrki sang, and Jussi played drums to match, the pair of them looked like they might be trying to expend all of their energy before the show even began. Their rituals were familiar to me, though, I had seen them all before.

Ville sat with a bottle of beer and a cigarette in each hand (!), beside Linde, who appeared to be high as a kite - and probably was, judging by the joint between his fingers. Gas sat on the other side of the couch from the pair, reading some sort of guitar magazine in French - I wondered if he was high too, and only believed he could understand it. Burton was engaging in a philosophical conversation with Mige, who appeared to have some sort of prayer beads wrapped around his wrist.

Those men… those men were weird, I had decided before my face returned to Jyrki’s Misfits t-shirt. They were far too obsessed with being “legitimate” to last very long; but it wasn’t like I had any professional say in the matter. I wrapped one arm around Jyrki’s waist - apparently slower and more deliberately than I had meant to.

“How much vodka was in that bottle?” I shrugged in an answer to his question as Jyrki stood up, pulling me to my feet with him. “Come on,” The black-haired man pulled me along, out the door that the boys were filing out of like there had been some sort of signal I had missed.

“I feel strange,” I commented, a fistful of Jyrki’s hair in my hand like a reign with which I followed him.

“Why would that be, kulta?” I couldn’t tell if he sounded concerned or not as he settled me on an amplifier and leaned between my legs; he took my face between his two hands, acting as if he were checking my pupils for dilation. I shrugged as I exhaled smoke out the side of my mouth - at least, I thought I had managed to get it out the side of my mouth, it seemed to all come out right into Jyrki’s face.

“Sinikka, really. You can’t be this drunk off of… that open bottle…” Suddenly, he was gone, and I was left swaying side to side on the amplifier; an epic battle going on between my drunk and/or drugged brain, which very much wanted to rip off my shirt and dance about half-naked, and my sober and/or normal brain, which encouraged me to sit very, very still and wait for Jyrki to come back and fix me. Sound began to pour from the amplifier beneath me, and startled me half to death about three seconds too late for the reaction to be normal (thank you for taking notes, sober brain). I unfolded my legs from their crisscrossed position to stand, still swaying, and attempted to make my way on stage.

“Hey hey! Where are you going!” Someone’s hands grabbed my shoulders and brought me back to the amplifier.

“But it’s loud.”

“Of course it’s loud. Mita Helvetti, Sini, are you alright?” I recognized Archie as he spun me around, and recognized the floor as I collapsed in a heap on it, dizzy from the spin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title credit; Queen.
> 
> Finnish-to-English;  
> ei, vittun - ah, fuck!  
> kulta - darling


	19. This corrosion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> title credit; Sisters of Mercy.
> 
> Finnish-to-English;  
> tama on perseesta - literally “This situation is from the ass”  
> vittun runkkari - fucking wanker  
> molopaa - dickhead

Someone pushed a bottle of water into my hands, but I shoved it away - all I wanted to do was sleep. I had been sleeping quite well; the nice, dreamless kind of sleep. It had been like - well, it was like I had passed out.

“Has she done anything?” It was Jyrki, but for some reason my eyelids felt like lead and wouldn’t open at my command like they usually would have.

“She just tried to beat me when I went to give her water,” Oh, it was Ville’s hands I had so viciously - or viscously - slapped away from my face. Probably the latter more than the former, seeing as I couldn’t open my eyes I couldn’t have moved very quickly at all - but I felt bad nonetheless. The sound of Velcro ripping and the feeling of a weight depressing the soft surface I laid on was followed by a pair of warm hands gripping the sides of my face.

“Sinikka? Sini love, are you alright?” I willed myself to move, every muscle in my body ached and screamed and attempted to make itself contribute to the movement of the whole… and ended up just laying there. Couldn’t. Even. Twitch. “I dunno, it’s been hours. She should have come ‘round by now.” So the show was over; I had missed the first show of my boyfriend’s first tour. How marvelous.

Again, I mentally screwed up my face and attempted to make something move, anything, a fart, a twitch, something. It was another failed attempt.

“I don’t understand what happened,” Jussi’s voice, now. “I drank from that fucking bottle, and I’m fine. Tama on perseesta.”

“I agree.” Jyrki’s rumbling bass made me attempt to move once more; someone laid a heavy jacket (I could feel the studs and a zipper) over my chest and Jyrki’s palm laid against my face once more. “Vittun runkkari!”

He shouldn’t swear so vilely, it simply wasn’t becoming.

“Wait, did she… did she say something?” Yes! Yes! I could have jumped for joy. One of Jyrki’s huge hands laid on my chest, the other on my cheek - another cold hand rested on my forehead, and someone’s strong hand gripped my arm firmly. “Sinikka? Sini darling.”

“Sinikka?” Ville’s voice was almost as deep as Jyrki’s, but not quite; and it wasn’t nearly as comforting as my black-haired boy’s.

“Wake up!” The strong hands - Jussi’s, obviously - mate grabbed my shoulder and shook me firmly.

“Stop shaking her you idiot! You’ll break her fucking neck!” Jyrki smacked away Jussi’s hands, a note of disgust in his voice - but I had been thankful for the movement, it seemed to loosen up a few muscles.

“Sometimes it helps,” Poor Jussi, always with the best of intentions… he sounded dejected and slightly hurt. Jyrki’s hand moved from my chest to grip my fingers in his.

Ah, yes! A twitch! A twitch! I never thought I’d have been happy about something so tiny.

“She’s waking up, I think,” Jyrki murmured, stroking my hair gently. “Come on love, tell me you’re there,”

“Hey Sini, wake up or I’ll dress you like Patricia Morrison!” They definitely thought I was dead at that point, if they hadn’t before - being shoved into a sky-high teased black wig, some sort of gothic pinup outfit and forced to play bass for Sisters of Mercy was probably about my worst nightmare (even though I did love the band, Patricia had always been a little much for polo/chino-wearing me). I managed another twitch of the finger, my middle finger.

“Come on Sini, you can wake up now, we already found your collection of Playgirl magazines,” Ville chided, following Jussi’s vein of teasing. Vicious, vicious men.

“We know you’re only dating me because you think I look like Peter Steele,” Jyrki crooned, gripping my hand harder as he did so. I managed to return the gesture as the feeling returned to my body - pins and needles as if my entire being had been asleep but now returned.

“That all your ‘good girl’ shit is just covering up for your job as a hooker,”

“We know that it’s not daddy paying for your schooling,” Ville finished Jussi’s vile thought; I really gripped Jyrki’s hand at that one.

“You’re just trying to style us after Sisters of Mercy and ruin our ‘street cred.’” The black-haired man holding my hand smiled down at me as I opened my eyes, his icy blues resting somewhere between my chin and my nose (Sini, that’s called a mouth; apparently I lost the ability to form cohesive thoughts while I was out).

“Molopaa,” I barely managed the curse - my lips felt like lead. Now I’d done it, Jyrki regarded me as if I was possessed, a single eyebrow arched high over his baby blues.

“Hey, you think if I shake her again we’ll actually get Sinikka this time?”

“Don’t,” It was barely a breath, but Jyrki and Ville were already trying to force me into a sitting position - something I definitely wouldn’t have been able to stomach. Carefully, they laid my back against the couch once more - the diseased, disgusting couch, one I never would have sat on of my own accord. God I was going to have to shower for days to get the stench off my skin.

“What the hell happened to you?” Jyrki’s brows knitted together as he brushed long black hair out of his face; his deep bass a touch higher than normal because of his concern. “One minute you were perfectly fine, then you went all nuts - tried to walk out on stage! - and then you were all over the floor.”

“Yeah, brainiac here wanted to cancel the show!” Jussi thwaped Jyrki upside the head - Jyrki shot the shorter boy a vicious look I had never had the pleasure of receiving and attempted to avoid at all costs.

While the pair (Jussi and Jyrki were great opposites, they interviewed well together - everyone loved to see them argue and bounce off one another for some reason) got into a slap fight reminiscent of fifth-grade girls fighting over a ball on the playground, I began feeling like my stomach might like to vacate my body for a time. My doting boyfriend and overly-annoying younger brother figure were too busy beating one another about the head and shoulders, so my wide eyes fell to Ville - I gave him a look as if the fate of the world rested on his shoulders. His green eyes widened as much as mine had, and he immediately darted for a trashcan.

Too late.

I felt extremely guilty, but it was only a pair of ratty old tennis shoes, nothing really important. They hadn’t even been on anyone’s feet! But none of that mattered, they ended up in a trash can with the rest of the contents of my stomach. Jyrki had even graciously surrendered to Jussi (who never, ever consented defeat if he could help it) in order to rub my back and tether my hair out of the way with an elastic, the likes of which my hair had probably never seen before.

“Done yet?” Ville asked, holding the old trashcan at arm’s length from his body. Jyrki had lifted my head out of the can when I couldn’t summon the strength to raise it myself and had come precariously close to getting my face stuck in the narrow opening of the thing.

“Yeah, I think the eye motions she’s making are the equivalent of a nod,” The black-haired man sat me up on the couch, and perched beside me, holding my still semi-limp body upright with his arm. “I think she needs to lay down somewhere cleaner than this couch,” Jyrki guessed, a hand on the side of my face.

“I think she needs a cigarette and a glass of wine, but perhaps it’s just my gentleman’s perspective.” Ville joked, producing a familiar pack of smokes from his back pocket; he was always saving my ciggys from clear and present danger, which included but was not limited to squishing by sitting, liquidation by laying down, and mashing by moshing. As slowly as I could manage, I nodded into Jyrki’s neck - where my head lay because apparently my own neck wasn’t strong enough to hold it up on its own.

“Smoke’d be nice,”

“Did you say something, Sin?” Jussi produced a lit cigarette out of thin air behind my ear - like I was some child who could be made to feel better by cute magic tricks. He did manage to make me giggle a little, before I weakly took a breath of smoke and I let my hand fall to my lap with the fag in it.

“We just want to figure out what the hell was wrong with you, darling,” Jyrki breathed in my ear, his fingers plucked the smoke from between mine and held it for me - as much as he hated the habit, I figured he didn’t want me to accidentally burn myself, or him, or even light the couch on fire (I was sure it was filled with enough combustible substances like alcohol, sweat and gasoline to make a pretty little foreign arson charge).

“My insides are corroding,” I muttered, reaching for the trashcan again. Ville stuck the thing between my legs and allowed me to bury my face in it without his support, Jyrki stroked the back of my head while I vomited. Someone pressed a bottle of water in my hand, one of Jyrki’s large hands yanked my head out of the trash can and Jussi tipped the bottle to my lips. “Ugh. Do. Not. Want.” The water that traveled down my esophagus was met by the bile that made its way up from my stomach and was ejected almost instantly.

“We can’t stay here all night,” Jussi murmured as he hastily yanked the water bottle out of the way of my projectile vomit.

“Let’s find a new trash can and get in the car,” Ville suggested and cast about the room as if there would be a second trash can. I watched the pair scramble over the brim of the can, feeling like an overly-protected child. Jyrki lifted the cigarette to my lips for me; greedily, I sucked on the filter like a newborn babe.

A fist pounded on the door, I didn’t have enough time to turn my head (it would probably have taken hours, the way the muscles in my neck felt) before Archie burst into the dressing room. He seized my duffel bag and purse as he spoke, giving the room a quick once-over to see if the men hadn’t forgotten anything in their haste to go get plastered after the show. That was supposed to be my job, but it was decidedly difficult to survey anything over the rim of a trash can.

“We need to leave!” With that, Archie blew back out of the room.

“He’s right, we’ll never make the next gig,” Ville sighed, and yanked the trashcan from my not-so-firm grasp. “Can you not vomit for a few minutes, hon?”

“Yeah, don’t yak on your boys, Sin,” The spiky-haired youth was at my elbow as Jyrki stood; the pair bore me up from the couch. I hadn’t regained motor function enough to do anything but allow myself to be carried by Jyrki to the waiting SUV. Ville already sat in it with a now-empty trashcan, Jussi helped Jyrki maneuver my legs into the middle seat before he hopped over my head into the back row, my black-haired man settled beside me, running his hands over my hair, over my face.

“That was just a sketchy place, Jyrki,” I couldn’t place the voice, it must have been one of Ville’s boys. A bottle of water distracted me from the reply, and immediately prompted me to empty my guts into the nearby stolen trashcan (arson, petty theft…).

“Great, we’re in the car with the puking girl,” Definitely Ville’s boys - The ‘Eyes knew me would never have dared incur Jyrki’s wrath with such an insult. Jyrki let me have a breath of smoke and followed it quickly with a sip of water - I managed to keep it down… for a few seconds.

“Can’t you get your woman to hold her alcohol, Jyrki?” My head had been buried in the trash can, but I felt Jyrki shift behind me as Jussi made an attempt to join whoever was in the front seat, fists flailing.

“Shut the fuck up, molopaa!”

“Stop running your mouth, Mige,” That was Jyrkt. I heard a fist connect with flesh and groaned along with poor Mige in the front seat - sure, he hadn’t been the nicest person to me, but that didn’t mean I wanted Jyrki or Jussi (or both!) to beat him to death!

“I want to go home,” I mumbled, and covered my eyes with my hands as I leaned back against the seat; the cigarette found its way to my mouth again.

“It can only go uphill from here, honey.”


	20. Sister Christian

The tour had gone well enough - from Madrid to Barcelona, Marseille to Monaco, Milan and finally to Rome. Finally, we were leaving the vehicles behind and taking a flight from Rome to Paris, where we would take a three-day holiday, the proceed to Strasbourg, Stuttgart and beyond. Opposite most bands, the ’Eyes and H.I.M. (as I had learned Ville’s band was called) had started at the bottom of Europe and began working their way back home slowly, but surely. Originally, I had planned to go home when we finally got to Paris, but had kept pushing back my departure date closer and closer to the start of school. It was a silly thing, but I hadn’t wanted to leave Jyrki, not since that first night when I had been drugged (we did eventually stop at a hospital where I took a drug test and almost got arrested because of the presence of a prescription medication I wasn’t prescribed to in my system).

I stood just outside the airport in Rome with Jyrki’s arm wrapped around my waist, Ville’s castoff cigarette in my mouth, as Jussi bopped around the three of us like the crazed monkey he was. The four of us had become quite inseparable recently - Jyrki and I were understandably so, Ville was Jyrki’s best friend so that made sense, but Jussi had a tendency to infuriate all of us at least once a day if not on an hourly basis. I figured we had taken the short, spiky-haired youth under our wings because of his age difference and the fact that he wound up the others far more than he exasperated us.

“Jus, can you just have a seat for a minute?” I asked, and traded Ville‘s cigarette for the new fag he had lit for me. Together, we were smoking the last of the packs we had between the three of us before we got on the plane; Jyrki was attached to my hip and therefore forced to remain.

“No way, man, I’m going to sit for the next two hours, I’m trying to get out some energy for your sake!” He, too, took a fresh cigarette and cushed the remains of his old one out on the concrete, and continued his “laps” around Jyrki, Ville and I.

“So what we need to do is buy about a dozen packs of nicotine gum for the flight, and we’ll be fine,” I had asked Ville how he had managed to fight the jitters I had gotten on the last flight due to nicotine withdrawal. His answer made sense, nicotine gum would probably hold me over for a while. “You’ll be eating the stuff Sin, I swear, but Jyrki - you’ll love her for it man. Her breath will smell like a freshly mown field of mint and she won’t try to gnaw your head off.”

Jyrki let a deep laugh slip as he squeezed my waist firmly, his lips met my neck before he spoke. “I love her even if her breath does smell like cigarette smoke and she tries to bite my head off.”

“Ah, you jest,” I poked him in the ribs as I breathed in a deep drag of tar and rat poison, and coughed it all out as Jussi tripped on the sidewalk and completely flashed the three of us - and all of the old ladies trying to get their cat- and hat-boxes into their taxis (Jussi was very rough on old ladies, it seemed). Full frontal male nudity, not even from the man that I liked to see that sort of thing from. Jyrki and Ville groaned and I looked away as Jussi pulled his pants up - he didn’t have very far to pull, his legs were short and he wore his pants too low to begin with - and grinned impishly.

“Ei Vittu! Invest in a belt, boy. Lovely inventions.” The black-haired man behind me sighed and perched his chin on my shoulder as he shot at Jussi.

“I’m wearing one!” He protested, cigarette clenched in his teeth as he cinched said belt as tightly as it would go.

“That won’t work - you haven’t any hips for it to catch on. I think you actually taper downwards,” Ville joked, gesturing with his smoke. God, it seemed my entire world revolved around cigarettes, especially right before I was to live without them for two hours. It was nearly unheard of.

I chuckled at the thought, and the motley bunch I found myself included in as I stamped on my spent fag, knowing that there were no more. The chain-smokers and Jyrki (the ‘Eyes were mainly a smoke-free group, and I knew that Linde and Mige liked the occasional fag, but nobody could tear through a carton like Ville and I left to our own devices - the addition of Jussi to the duo only made consumption worse). It was surprising, though, that Ville still put up with Jyrki and I - how many times had he walked in on us in the hotel room the three of us had shared? I couldn’t even speculate on a number. I would have hated us if it had been me.

“We ready? Belts all tight? Pants where they should be?” I flashed Jyrki a half-grin and clasped one of his enormous hands in both of mine as the four of us made our way into the building and through security. For some reason, I was always the one who had to take off my shoes and be strip-searched through security in Airports, because I was so obviously the odd one out I guessed.

Finally, I reached the terminals, and found Ville with a brown paper bag. He shoved it into my hands.

“For the three of us,” I opened it and looked inside - a plethora of nicotine gum packs stared back at me, along with a surplus of barf bags. “And extra bags for Burton and Baize, I remembered we almost ran out last flight.” He grinned at me as Jyrki and Jussi arrived, both clutched magazines and bottled water like they were made of gold - probably similar to how I clutched the brown bag.

“Thanks, Ville,”

“Anytime.”

Hand-in-hand with Jyrki and chewing my first piece of nicotine gum, I made my way to where our flight waited. The Boys all sat in a corner - the more normal-looking people of the terminal had given them a wide berth, and nobody sat near.

“So Jussi, I didn’t know you could read.” The quips began as soon as we approached. It was sad, actually, to watch the boys all pick on the poor short boy; he was the scapegoat for all of their problems, when someone didn’t get ass one night after a show, it was because Jussi had stolen all of the girls, if something smelled, it was because of Jussi’s sweat, if they sat on something spiky it was obviously his head, et cetera. It was enough to make me angry, and I wasn’t the only one. As we filed onto the plane and took to our seats, I motioned to the window seat beside my middle seat.

“Here Jus, sit with us.” Honestly it was like middle schoolers in a lunch room; if I hadn’t offered him the seat, Ville would have sat with Jyrki and I and Jus would have been placed beside someone else who would have torn into him for the entire two hours of the flight. It was almost more than I could stand - as much as Jussi drove me up a wall, it killed me to hear what the guys had to say about him, and it wasn’t like he would ever utter a cruel word about any one of them.

His face lit up like a kid who had gotten just what he always asked for on Christmas day, and he plopped down into the seat beside me, tapping a pair of drumsticks he had produced from nowhere on the insides of his knees. Jyrki settled in for the flight beside me; he had pulled a nearly-finished, beaten copy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula from my bag, along with a similarly-conditioned copy of Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky. Honestly, the man devoured novels - he was already three pages in by the time the plane began to taxi down the runway, when he was forced to put the book down in order to hold my hand (takeoffs were not my friend, neither were landings).

After we were in the air and able to move about the cabin, I flagged down the stewardess for alcohol, for which I was in desperate need.

“Want a glass, Jyrki? Jussi?” Jyrki took a pass, but Jussi and I got a travel-sized bottle of Absolut each. I chose to use the tiny plastic cup the flight attendant presented me, but Jussi simply chugged his straight from the bottle - in one gulp. Sipping from my little glass, I watched him with a raised eyebrow.

I finished my drink and rested my head on Jyrki’s shoulder as he read, the rhythm of Jussi’s drumming (he tapped on everything, even while he was reading!) lulled me to sleep. Unfortunately, that meant I missed an incident where Burton locked himself in one of the bathrooms and had a lot of angry passengers banging on the door, and when Baize vomited on a flight attendant - which didn’t bother me much, but would have been great things to tease them about.

I stood, shouldering the large duffel bag as I trailed behind Jyrki off the plane; I gripped the back of the shirt so as not to be separated from him. As we made our way to the baggage claim, I marveled at the fact that we were in France!Finally, I could wear a beret and fit in! Not that I would ever wear a beret.

After the chaos of the last baggage claim, the boys had each selected a bright bandanna (I had a few neon-colored ones in reserve, just in case the ‘Eyes deserted Glam Rock for Gay Rock) and somehow affixed it to their bag. It helped Jyrki immensely - he didn’t accidentally attempt to steal any poor traveler’s luggage; Jussi’s hadn’t been lost in Egypt - all was well. Ville, Jussi and I all chipped in to buy a carton of French cigarettes and one of good ole Marlboro‘s.

I lit one of the French smokes as I filed out of the airport with the boys - into yet another set of Black SUV’s. I settled into my customary place between Jyrki and Ville - with Jussi and Baize in the backseat and Archie in the passenger’s seat - before we rolled out of Charles De Gaulle, headed for our hotel in the city. Apparently, the lot of us were to stay at a swanky hotel at the Camps d’Elysse - which was extremely charitable of the label seeing as he was stayed in nothing but roach motels since we left Madrid - and the boys would perform at le Fleche d’Or, some sort of cute little venue or another.

As soon as we set foot in the hotel room I set out a fresh set of clothes and showered - there was still plenty of time to get lost in town before the gig.

I emerged from the bathroom with two of our three allotted towels - one wrapped around my hair, the other over my body. Jyrki lay sprawled on the bed beside my clean clothes, and Ville was nowhere to be seen, so I meticulously began to dry myself with the third towel - stark naked. The black-haired man on the bed perked up, riding up on his elbows with an eyebrow quirked.

“What?” It was such an innocent question, as if I wasn’t aware of exactly what I was doing to him as I slipped into one of my favorite matching sets (I never knew why I always wore matching lingerie - it was just something I thought was necessary, and by the time I figured out that every bra didn’t have to match every pair of underwear, I already had too many sets to quit). As an answer, Jyrki shot me the look he usually saved for Jussi when he was being too annoying for his own good; I tried my best not to wilt under that glare, but his eyes cut like icicles falling off a roof.

“But Jyrki, I want to go see the city,” A disgusting whine, the kind I only used when I made an attempt to mess with Jyrki. It never worked on the black-haired man, but it was always worth a try.

“You’ll still have time to see the city, I promise.” His huge hands wrapped themselves around my waist as he pulled me toward the bed, planting kisses on the bare skin of my stomach. I twined my hands through his hair and willed his face to mine (because there was no pulling Jyrki, he was just a tad stronger than I was). The moment his lips touched mine, the man threw me down on the bed (I must have bounced a foot into the air with the force of it all) and came down on top of me, the dastardly smile I loved so much plastered on his face.

So I ripped off his shirt, in retaliation for his rough toss. It had been cut up the sides for an earlier gig, so it was quite easy to do (even for lil’ ole Sini, the girl who was never allowed to carry anything except my duffel bag and perhaps my own purse if it didn’t look to heavy for me - the boys really could irk me so).

“But that was one of my favorites,” His murmur was into the side of my face as he struggled with a bra clasp - something he had never quite mastered. I thought it was something to do with the size of his hands, and whenever I attempted to help him or assure him that it was alright to fumble, he would take it as an insult and roll away, so all there was to do was lay beneath him and try not to lay too heavily on his hands.

“Fucking, piru viekoon!”

“Don’t you swear at me, Jyrki Linnankivi!” I gave him a good thwap on the head for his lip, just as his fingers finally managed the clasp.

“Oh, say it again,” The black-haired man quipped, wrapping his arms around my back in such a manner that he had to reach up to kiss my neck and jawbone. It was an odd position.

“Don’t be a brat!”

“I love you, Sinikka,”

“And I you,”

“Damn, I thought I had you there,” My hands fumbled at his belt as his flowed down my sides to rest on my hips.

“I’m a bit smarter than that,” He let a chuckle slip - big mistake. I smacked him upside the head with the flat of my palm - it made more noise than anything - and watched as he raised an eyebrow.

“Oh really?” I nodded in reply; and then there was a scramble for dominance on the bed, which I lost, naturally.

“Mina rakastan sinua, Jyrki,”

“God Sinikka, words can’t describe how much I love you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title credit; Night Ranger.
> 
> Finnish-to-English;  
> ei vittu - ah, fuck!  
> piru viekoon - literally, “shall the devil take it”  
> mina rakastan sinua - I love you


	21. Don’t you forget about me

God Paris was beautiful. I had suffered through yet another show (honestly, did the boys not have anything else to play for me) before I was finally let loose on the city of lights. Well, not exactly let loose; not with Jyrki and Jussi tugging my hands like children, pulling me this way and that to see this sight and that bar, that weird-looking monkey and that atypical French man. I wasn’t quite certain how much I could take of it.

God Paris was hot. I rolled the bottoms of my khaki shorts up one more notch, and pulled the hem of the pink polo out to allow air flow. How the two men with me were holding up in their outfits of nearly all black and leather I would never know - must be some sort of magical mind trick. I’d never know. With a bottle of Evian (the only water I could find; I looked quite precocious with it) in one hand and a clove cigarette (the only kind to smoke while out on the town - Jussi was disgusted) in the other, the three of us made our way through the Latin Quarter. The palm of Jyrki’s hand was cool on the flat of my back, and Jussi hopped on ahead, with the tote bag I had brought (weighed down with a book Jyrki had found in a quaint store and a striped Lacoste polo I had snagged for a Euro and a half) under his arm.

Sometimes I wondered if he was mentally challenged.

“No, I don’t really want to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower,” I said to Jyrki as he attempted to pull me into another quaint used bookstore. As cute as it was, I had grown tired of following him in and milling about for thirty minutes at a time; there was a little more to Paris that smelly bookstores, I was sure.

“Jus! Do you want to got to the top of the Eiffel Tower?” Oh, great, here we go. Jussi would agree with any suggestion which involved lots of motion - because obviously one must not take the elevator to the top, but the stairs.

At the bottom of the tower, I stared up at the daunting task ahead of me. Millions of billions of tourists had stopped to glare at my companions as if Jyrki or Jussi might suddenly rob them all blind, and I did not want to go up that many flights of stairs. It wasn’t that I wasn’t fit or anything (the trillions of stairs in Helsinki had seen to that a long time ago), just sublimely lazy and quite stubborn.

Nearly an hour later, I stood at the top of the Eiffel Tower looking down at Paris - and remembering why I didn’t really enjoy heights all too much. While Jyrki snapped pictures, I clung to the glass as far opposite the wire cage of the top as I could go, and Jussi practically climbed up the cage in his excitement to see Paris form an aerial view. In my most humble opinion, the fronts of the buildings were much more exciting than their tops.

“Alright, alright. We saw it, now can we go about taking the elevator down?”

“No way man, this is awesome! Look, I’m flying!” Jussi stuck his arms through the diamond-shaped holes of the steel cage which surrounded us (and many other tourists) and faked flight beside Jyrki, who meticulously snapped each angle through the camera I had brought up with me.

“I’m not a man, and get down form there! I’m going to have a heart attack!” Absently, Jyrki grabbed a handful of Jussi’s shirt with his free hand and yanked the short youth downwards, still taking pictures. No, I wasn’t enjoying this particular venture, not one bit. I could survive crappy, crab-infested venues, roach motels, long airplane rides without nicotine, but heights were quite beyond the limits of my capacity to contain myself. Forced to remain in the air for this long, I had begun to scrub at the sides of my head with my fingers, which messed up the tight bun I had pulled my hair into that morning and probably made me look like the crazed cat lady from down the street - a look in the glass window behind me confirmed this.

“Jyrki? Please?” The black-haired man turned as if he were about to lecture me on the virtues of patience, but his eyes softened almost instantly.

“Oh, all right Sini. Come on.”

I held Jyrki’s hand firmly as we made our way to the elevator - Jussi ran on ahead as if he wanted to part the crowd for us, a sweet gesture which was slightly less than useless due to his stature (and the fact that the boy moved faster than a gazelle trying to escape a cheetah, even in such a thick crowd). I didn’t (or couldn’t?) speak until both feet were firmly on the ground.

“God that was horrible,” I breathed, as I clutched Jyrki’s broad shoulder for support (I had let go of his hand though, after he complained that his circulation had been cut off and Jussi was going to have to amputate all of his fingers with a drumstick or something cruel like that).

“Let’s go see the Louvre! Come on, you guys, come on!” I was sick of hearing those two words together by that point - Jussi had fidgeted through the entire elevator ride (all five minutes of it) muttering “come on, come on!” under his breath as I fought a full-fledged mental breakdown.

“Give her a minute to catch her breath, Jus!” My black-haired boy tossed his arm over my shoulders and cupped me to his body in a protective manner, running his fingers though my hair and muttering soothing things in my ear - much like someone would do to calm a frightened animal. Which I was. Honestly, sometimes it seemed like Jussi was definitely snorting cocaine when our heads were turned or something, the boy was full of nothing but boundless energy and never-ending cheerfulness; I knew Jyrki would never have stood for it, so Jus’s natural high must have been just that - natural. How could anyone be so hyper and happy all of the time?

I wanted to know his secret, but not really.

Finally, we were on the move again, on the way to the Louvre form the Eiffel tower; the trip involved crossing a pedestrian bridge, and hopping on the Metro for a few stops. By the end of the adventure, the two boys with me were thanking God or whatever deity they so chose that I had been an overachiever and chose to study French in High School; my fluency was what got us across town in an hour, as Parisians tended to scoff at tourists who couldn‘t speak the language.

The time before I had to board a plane back to Helsinki alone passed all too quickly - we had blasted through the Louvre, strolled at a very brisk pace down the Camps d’Elysse, observed the boats on the Seine as we meandered quickly over a pedestrian bridge, and stopped only to sign autographs to black-clad fans in the Latin quarter (and to purchase crepes at a stand for lunch). The day had been my first visit to France, and the most exhausting. But all too soon, I found myself traipsing through a terminal in Charles De Gaulle airport with six companions (aside from Ville, the H.I.M. guys didn’t care enough to wake up at eleven hundred hours to see me off, apparently). Jyrki had wrapped himself around my back and chest and decided he wasn’t going to let go until I was supposed to get on the plane (thank God the guys were there to carry my things).

“Jyrki, really, it will be alright,” I managed, after the lot of us passed security. “I’m only going home, I’ll still be there when you get back!” The boys had made themselves scarce as Jyrki clutched my body to his chest and buried his face in my hair; I found myself stroking his hair and murmuring sweet, soothing nothings in his ear, a strange role reversal.

“But I can’t trust any of the guys to style me like you do, they might stab my eye out with the eyeliner,” He murmured as he began to slowly lean his weight on me.

“Honestly Jyrki, you gotta hold yourself - oh, alright. Fine.” Always the trooper, I tried to hold him up for as long as I could manage before my knees started to collapse beneath his “superior” weight. “Jyrki, please?” He sighed, and resigned himself to sulking with his chin balanced on top of my head - which was a little uncomfortable, but bearable. “Trust me, kulta,, you’ll do fine without me. Just don’t get too drunk on a nightly basis and remember to call me so I know you haven’t forgotten me or something.”

“I would never forget you,” I smiled wryly at his response as I stretched my lips to meet his neck.

“The way girls throw themselves at you every night? I’m sure I wouldn’t be very hard to forget.” I joked, and earned a punch in the arm for the sass. He drew me up on my tiptoes to kiss me, I wrapped my arms around his black-haired head to pull his face down to my reach (Jyrki didn’t understand that even on my tiptoes I was just a touch too short, and resented that I always bore him down, but would never ever stoop on his own). After a few minutes of ‘tongue dancing’ (as Jussi had called it so eloquently one evening backstage), our smooch was broken by a nearby scoff - the boys had returned.

“Ok, so I got you the nicotine gum. Don’t overdose on it, alright?” Ville pressed the brown paper bag into my hands, and added, “Give Hanna a hug and a kiss for me, will you?”

“I’m afraid I’ll only be able to convey a hug, Ville,” I smiled and gave the wiry man a hug - one of Jyrki’s hands had somehow buried itself in my pocket, which made the hug very awkward and inept, but I understood his inability to let go.

Jussi presented the drummer’s magazine to me with a silent pout, and melted back into the semi-circle of men around me without so much as a hug - I would have to single him out for a punch before I got on the plane if there was time. Before I could chase after him, Archie and Baize presented me with a cup of lukewarm coffee and a new pack of cigarettes for when I touched down.

“Thank you guys, it means a lot,” I hugged each of them in turn, trying to balance all of my stuff and still slightly restrained by Jyrki. Timo’s heavy hand ruffled the top of my hair before he moved in for his hug.

After a few more minutes clasped in Jyrki’s arms, I pushed my things into his hands and promised I would be back in a minute and made my way over to where Jussi sat by the gate.

“Hey brat, where’s my hug, huh?” My hand fell heavily on his unspiked, freshly-washed head and mussed the uncharacteristically flat hair. He didn’t budge. “Aw, come on kid. That pout is epic.” I glanced over my shoulder to see the guys all in a knot, discussing and motioning to Jussi and I.

“I thought you were going to stay with us,” He finally murmured, and looked up with his arms crossed over his chest.

“I want to, but you know I have school, Jus.” I sighed. “That pout is not going to make me stay,” He finally smiled, but only barely, as if he took the statement seriously.

“But it’ll suck without you,” I laughed at the sentiment, and smiled.

“Jyrks and Ville will keep you occupied, I’m sure,”

“Yeah, but they don’t really care.” The statement made me frown - he was right, apparently he had noticed the occasional verbal spars the guys and I got into where I was the only one defending the poor boy. He was a lot smarter than they gave him credit for.

“Get up and give me a hug. And promise to call me, and keep Jyrki off all the girls.” Jussi grinned outright at this, and bounced to his feet. “There you go, that’s the little brother I know,” He threw his petite arms around my shoulders and squeezed me to his chest with force to rival Jyrki’s tight hugs. “’Atta boy.”

We made our way back over to Jyrki and the boys, I chatted with them all before boarding was called. Jyrki pulled me aside at that point for another series of deep kisses, and a murmured conversation.

“What was that all about?”

“He was sad; you guys really are ruthless to him.” Now it was Jyrki’s turn to stare down at his shoes like a guilty child. “He really just needs someone to look out for him, darling, he’s still so young. Way too young for all of the girls, the booze, all of this.”

“I know, Sini, I know.”

“You can keep yourself really busy while I’m gone by looking after him, you know,” I smiled brightly, and stretched up to kiss him once more as the last call for boarding came over the speakers. “I love you, Jyrki, I love you so much.”

“I’m going to miss you, darling. I love you.”

“Love you more.”

“No you don’t!”

“Yes I do!” And we continued until the boys rushed around us for a group hug. With one lass kiss from Jyrki and a hug from each of the guys (even a now-smiling Jussi), and many promises to call I finally split from the group to climb on the plane, sipping the coffee Archie had bought me in an attempt to finish it before it got cold or I needed the nicotine gum Ville had supplied me with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title credit; Simple Minds
> 
> Finnish-to-English;  
> kulta - darling


	22. Into the mystic

I felt that I had become all too accustomed to international travel by plane - after avoiding them all of my life, here were three plane trips all in a month. It was like I had become some hot-shot business woman or something, I mused as I disembarked in the Helsinki-Vantaa airport, chewing a piece of nicotine gum until I could finally get a cigarette in my mouth.

“Sinikka!”

“Oh God, Hanna!” I nearly dropped my bags as we collided, she hugged me as hard (or harder) than any of the boys had upon my departure. “I missed you so much!”

“I’ve been so bored without you Sini, you have no idea!” She shouldered my duffel bag (why did everyone insist on carrying my crap? Did I look like I seriously couldn’t carry anything?) as we walked away from the packed terminal toward baggage claim. Hanna chattered away as she always did, and I listened with an occasional comment, as I always did.

“… and I’ve had to hang out with Lauri and his friends, and Paavo and Kiirsi. Oh God, Paavo and Kiirsi are so gross, Sini!” I grimaced at the thought as I lit a cigarette, cradling the lighter in my cupped palm.

“Oh lord, I don’t think I want to talk about Paavo and Kiirsi. Oh, and I forgot!” I snatched her up in a close hug for a minute. “Ville wanted me to give you a hug and a kiss, but I could only take him up on half of the delivery. Sorry,” I grinned brightly at Hanna - my only real girlfriend in the world.

“That ass! He hasn’t called me in three days!”

“That’s probably because he was too drunk to pick up the phone!”

We picked out my luggage and boarded the Metro, headed to Hanna’s apartment. Apparently, when I had speculated if my apartment had been flea-infested on my graduation day, I had been half right; the place was currently being fumigated for the infestation of cockroaches Paavo had discovered shortly after I had left to go on tour, which left the both of us homeless. Thank God Hanna had been home to clean out my belongings and offered her place to stay, else I’d be homeless and naked (conceivably, I could have stayed at Jyrki and Ville’s place, but it definitely would have been strange without the pair of them around to harass me).

“You know, I’ve never been to your place,” I commented, as we climbed the stairs that led up to the apartment she shared with her little brother; lugging my red bag up the three flights of stairs was a combined effort.

“Well then this will be an enlightening experience, won’t it?” Hanna laughed as she opened the door. The place wasn’t really a mess, not truly, but one could easily see where Hanna’s space ended and Lauri’s began. In the living room there was a TV perched precariously atop a table cluttered with VHS tapes, a worn-in blue suede couch, and a drum set. So that was why Jussi and Lauri were such good friends…

“So I had Lauri get out the air-mattress and fill it this morning, so it’s all ready for you in my room. I don’t think he dressed it at all, so I’ll go find some sheets. Feel free to make yourself at home,” With that, she disappeared, leaving me to survey the strangely-furnished living room before I wandered into the kitchen and began foraging for coffee with an unlit cigarette dangling from my lips.

“We don’t smoke in the house.” The short blond boy had his arms crossed over his chest, somehow managing to take up the entire doorframe with his diminutive stature. I lifted an eyebrow as I pulled out a mug for the coffee which slowly percolated in the nearby machine, and carefully tucked the cigarette behind my ear.

“Sorry. Would you like some coffee?”

“I don’t drink coffee. Tastes like shit.” Lauri moved to perch on the counter across from where I waited for the coffee.

“I guess it’s definitely an acquired taste,” I wondered if he was trying to push all of my buttons - he was definitely doing a bang-up job of it if he was. Slowly, I withdrew the carafe from the machine and poured a cup for myself. “So where do I go to get my nicotine fix?” Please don’t say downstairs, please don’t say downstairs…

“Downstairs.” Shit. Bleary-eyed and weary from the trip - and wondering what time it was in the back of my mind - I took my coffee and cigarettes and proceeded to the front door. Hanna accosted me along the way.

“Where are you going?”

“Lauri told me I had to smoke downstairs,” I shrugged, and sucked down as much of the burning hot liquid from the mug in my hand as I could in one mouthful. Hanna simply rolled her eyes, and motioned for me to sit.

“Lauri is an immature asshole,” She shouted, just loud enough for him to hear, I guessed as I perched on the arm of the couch, juggling coffee and cigarettes with practiced ease.

Settling in for my stay with the Ylonen siblings wasn’t too difficult; I soon learned to live by two creeds - don’t listen to a word Lauri said, and try not to let the landlord notice I was living there. Since I wasn’t going to stay for very long, Hanna had decided that it would better to not inform the landlord of my existence and risk being forced to pay higher rent for a month for increased occupancy. I was all too happy to comply with this, but it meant that if I was to leave I’d have to be accompanied by one of the siblings so I would appear as nothing but a day visitor. It really sucked when the time came for me to go out and secure the books I would need for the semester, and even more so when I finally got to move back into the apartment I shared with my brother right before the start of the semester.

The move had been excruciating, moving all of the stuff from Hanna’s house required multiple trips on the metro with awkward boxes, and I had been forced to endure more negative comments about the size of my wardrobe than I could bear. But what was worse than surviving Hanna’s good natured taunts and Lauri’s cutting jabs was the fact that not even two minutes after I had gotten my room back together, I found my brother had decided move-in day was a good day for band practice.

And his band wasn’t the normal kind.

Four cellos screeched together as I put the polo’s in my closet back into rainbow order and tried not to wonder how quickly a cello would burn if one held a cigarette to its wood. They were still playing when I moved from the closet to the dresser drawers, and the ruckus continued as I answered the ringing phone nearly half an hour later.

“Paavo, can you hush for a second?” I called, asking all too politely for the pain they had been putting me through. After a few rings, it became clear that they were ignoring me, so I set my cigarette down in the ashtray and answered the phone as civilly as I could manage (because it wasn’t the person on the lines fault my brother had suddenly turned into an asshole). “Hello, Lotjonen residence.” I rubbed my temples with a smoke in hand, and had to plug one ear with my fingers in order to hear the person on the other end.

“Sinikka! Hanna told …” The rest of my doting boyfriend’s loving sentence was drowned out by the sound of a dying cow giving it’s last rights.

“Can you hold that thought, Jyrki?” I asked, and set the phone down before he could answer, mainly because I wouldn’t be able to hear him if he didn’t comply with my request anyway. Furious, I stomped to Paavo’s room and kicked open the door (really I pushed open the handle, but I was angry enough to start kicking).

“For real, Paavo? Can’t you just quiet down for one vittun minute while I talk on the phone?” Beer cans littered the ground between the four cellists and their instruments, so many that a little avalanche had fallen out of the door when I had opened it. “I feel like your mother, Paavo! Get a job, get a life, get out of my HOUSE!”

I hadn’t meant to scream at them - I was a big believer in level-toned threats, which were usually much more intimidating - but perhaps the black polo I had chosen for the day was frightening to them (black = Sinikka in a bad mood), and one by one the musicians who didn’t live in my house packed up their cellos and left as I hovered in the doorway watching. The trio were escorted out by my sullen, sulking older brother, and I took a calming breath of smoke before I picked up the phone again.

“I’m sorry, kulta. Paavo thinks he’s cool if he plays rock music on his cello with his friends. Where are you today?” Slowly, I dragged my body up onto the counter between the coffee maker (my favorite part of the kitchen) and the blue and white china ash tray (another favorite).

“Copenhagen.”

“Copenhagen already?”

“I know! Only a few more stops until we’re home for that last gig.” I smiled into the phone - true to his word, Jyrki had called every evening (Helsinki time, too, very considerate of him!) and it had been the only thing keeping me sane in the Ylonen household. “So school starts tomorrow,”

“I’m all excited. It’s ridiculous.” Jyrki laughed, and made a sound as if he was trying to fight someone off of him.

“Oh, that’ll all wear off. Hang on a second,” The muffled sound of a palm being placed over the receiver made me hold the phone away from my ear and reach for my abandoned cigarette. Apparently the boys had no self-restraint when I wasn’t there to play mommy.

“I miss you,” His deep baritone returned. “And I love you. But Jussi wants to talk to you before we go onstage. Good luck in class tomorrow, sweetling.”

I barely managed an “I love you” in return before Jussi got a hold of the receiver and began to talk a mile a minute about nearly nothing. He made me smile, though, it was nice to know that more people missed me than the one who was obliged to.

“Yes Jus, I’m fine. No, Jyrki didn’t have time to tell me that they poured egg whites on your head, they‘re horrible, horrible men. Did you at least take a shower? Good boy. Alright, well play well tonight, put me back on with Jyrki.” Again I wondered about Jussi’s natural high as I managed to answer all of his questions and concerns before he finally put me on with Jyrki for the last minute before their gig started.

“I love you, honey.” I murmured as Paavo walked back into the apartment, looking like he was about to burst. “But I have to go. Play a good gig for me,”

“I know you could care less about how well I do or do not do onstage,” Jyrki laughed, but returned my sentiments before he had to go.

With a sigh, I gently set the phone on the cradle and leaned my head against the cabinet as I watched Paavo pace back and forth in front of me. He was about to break into some sort of uncharacteristic rant, I knew it - he had been doing strange things like this since he had started dating Kirsi - all I could do was suck on a smoke and brace myself.

“Saatanan runkkari, Sinikka!” Paavo continued his pacing as he shouted, my brother wouldn’t even look at me as he ‘reprimanded’ me. “Honestly, woman, I lived here before you did, this is my apartment, not yours!”

“Yeah, and look at what a shit hole you had before I came here! Shut the hell up, Paavo.”

“Bitch! Why don’t you go and live with your boyfriend if you don’t like it?”

“I don’t even know you any more! Who are you and what have you done with my brother!” On my feet now, I tried to make an escape to my room with my ashtray and cigarettes, but semi-drunken Paavo was faster than I had thought. He wrenched the beautiful piece of china out of my hand and threw it at the nearby wall.

“How dare you! Get the hell away from me, Paavo!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title credit; Van Morrison
> 
> Finnish-to-English;  
> vittun - fucking  
> kulta - darling  
> saatanan runkkari - literally, “Satan’s a wanker,” but considered much more offensive.


	23. Cry little sister

Avoiding Paavo became a lot less awkward when school began again, and I actually had an excuse to be out of the house on a daily basis for extended periods of time. More and more I found that I missed the last metro ride to Vallila and ended up taking the bus home in the dark. There was nothing to go home to except Paavo’s outrageous behavior and his cello-playing companions. As a result, my grades and reputation with my professors had begun to improve (surprising, but plausible - I had only been Salutatorian upon graduation, after all) because I had all the time in the world to study.

I also found that I could run pretty damned fast with a thick Chemistry book in my arms and two more just like it in a tote bag on my side in order to catch that last bus home. Even in a pair of spiky heels I could usually arrive at the stop just in time.

Just not today, apparently. I tugged on a long ponytail with an angry fist, as if yanking the hair from my head would help me get home in the dark. I hadn’t any money for a taxi and night had already begun to fall, so with a lit smoke and a sigh I began down the road to the next bus stop, the one I knew was still in service at that time of night - hopefully, I’d make the bus and not have to take the long walk home in the dark.

I didn’t, and ended up taking that long walk home in the dark.

Somewhere along the long road when I finally stopped focusing on how much my feet had begun to hurt in the ridiculous shoes I had chosen and after I had stopped at an Alko to get another pack of fags (walking without smokes was more torturous than an international flight without them), I realized that I hadn’t just been avoiding Paavo. God I missed Jyrki, in the dark I could feel the withdrawal symptoms as clearly as if I had just had an intervention. Maybe I should have trotted right back into that Alko and gotten a bottle of whatever they had cheap. It was no way to live.

Juggling with my keys, books and a brand new cigarette (a ward against the evil that was Paavo), I managed to push my way into a darkened flat and tore the shoes off my feet just in the nick of time - I might have been forced to amputate them with a meat cleaver or something right on my kitchen counter if I had gotten home any later. Fumbling, I managed the light switch and dumped my books on the counter, just daring Paavo to explode again.

Speaking of, I couldn’t help but wonder what had become of my bastard of a brother during the day. As of late, I would usually find him draped over some piece of furniture in the house, drunk as all hell but ready to participate in his favorite new sport - called Verbally Dismember the Sister or something to that effect. On a normal day, I would walk in, set my books down, and try to make it to my room before I was tempted to put a cigarette out on his forehead, but as of yet he was nowhere to be found.

“Paavo? Where did you bugger off to now?” Careful not to drop any ash on the floor (hardwood singed easily and it was my head if the apartment depreciated in value at all), I lit a new cigarette off the defunct butt of the other as I visited the usual places my brother liked to pass out. He was like a fat, pampered housecat in that he had certain areas of the house - little corners - where he enjoyed curling up with a bottle of whatever I happened to have left in the cupboard and drank until he could no longer form a coherent sentence, which was normally when he would begin to badger me.

“I’m getting bored here. Come out, Paavo.”

But he didn’t ‘come out,’ and a thorough search of the apartment (with every light I could produce glaring on its highest setting) produced absolutely no trace of my older brother. On a Thursday night, he should have been home unless he had gotten a job I didn’t know about - and what kind of job had one out at nine o’clock at night, anyway? I suppressed a laugh as I envisioned Paavo working a street corner in a ratty blond wig and lipstick, and nearly wet myself when the thought of pole dancing arose - it was good to know I could still entertain myself sometimes. When I was about to produce my CSI kit and perhaps whip off an imaginary pair of glasses and call the phenomenon murder, the phone rang.

“Paavo?” I had run across the room to the phone as if the angry god of answering would smite me if I did not pick up before that second ring, and nearly dropped a lit fag down the front of the bright blue polo I wore.

“No, Jyrki. You haven’t forgotten me, right?” With a sigh, I perched on the countertop as was my habit when talking on the phone with Jyrki, and began twisting the cord through my fingers - a habit while talking on the phone with anyone.

“I’m sorry Jyrks, it’s just… Well… Paavo’s not home. And he usually is by now.” I couldn’t hide the worry in my voice, even though I already knew what Jyrki was going to say was true even before he said it - what were we, an old fucking married couple? Or had I developed telekinetic powers (which I could probably have used to track down my brother)?

“Aw come on Sini, he’s a big boy, right?” I sighed and nodded, before I realized we were on the phone and I had to voice my agreement for the simple fact that there were no eyes in the receiver.

“How are you?”

“Bored as is usual, I’m currently standing at a payphone in a terminal watching Jussi practice his new favorite motion.” My eyebrows shot nearly off my forehead as I wondered why any of the guys would let Jussi do “his favorite motion” in public, before Jyrki put my runaway naughty streak in check. “Not that motion, sweetling, someone on the street taught him how to do a backflip. It was fantastic at first, but now even Ville’s starting to get annoyed.”

“Oh dear. If it’s any consolation, I have a thesis to write over the weekend.”

“Because that makes me feel better about myself…” I laughed at Jyrki’s false sorrow, wishing that I could have been with the boys. Anywhere was better than the damned apartment. “At least we’re coming home soon, Sin. I don’t think I could take another three weeks of this.”

“What’s this? Drinking, partying, having fun?” The question was distracted as I pulled a book from my bag and let it fall open in my lap to the chapter I had to write on. “Existing outside of the real world?” My finger traced down the highlighted sentences and followed the notes in the margins of the textbook, and then hastily brushed ash from the cigarette between my lips off of the white paper.

“I miss you. And the real world.”

“I miss you more.”

“Oh, shut up. You have things to keep you busy, all I get to do is sit around and think about you.” A pen cap clenched between my teeth alongside a smoke, I couldn’t protest while I jotted a new note in the margin. “Anyway, I know you’re busy. So I love you, and I’ll put Jussi on.”

“I love you too, Jyrki. And I miss you, damnit.” I knew he smiled by the timber of his laugh, but before I could dwell on how much I missed that smile, Jussi was on the other end of the phone, talking faster than the speed of sound about how he broke one of his favorite drumsticks yesterday and he was so bummed about it but he also had discovered a new type of alcoholic beverage that I would definitely need to try when I got home and did I have any French cigarettes at all?

“Oh man Jus, that sucks. I’m sure it’ll be a great drink. No, I’ve gone and smoked them all, I’m sorry. But I have to work on a paper dear, will you give me back to my boy for a minute before I go?”

“I miss you, Sini. Jyrki’s about to die without you, too, he’s getting all angry at everyone and shit, it’s really annoying. Wit’s end, you know?”

“Yeah, I guess I know the feeling. I miss you too, Jus. Remember that drink so you can make it for me when you get back, I think I’ll need it.” I knew he had already bopped off to tap Jyrki on the shoulder and tell him I was still waiting on the line before I managed my entire dismissal - Jussi wasn’t one for goodbyes. Not enough time in his hyperactive day, I’d guess.

“Sinikka?”

“Can you just talk to me for another half hour or something?” I was certain the pout in my voice was palpable, and probably brought another smile from my black-haired lover. “Please? I have no company and even Paavo is better than nothing on a Thursday night.”

“Alright honey, here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to dig out that bottle of wine I gave you -” I wondered if Paavo had gotten to it, but remembered that I hadn’t let the aged Red join the other alcohol in our home cabinet “-and pour yourself a generous glass while you start on your paper. And then you’re going to run this beautiful bath with bubbles and candles.” I smiled lightly as I balanced the open book on my lap and blew a smoke ring. “You’re going to put down the cigarette for a little bit, and maybe even put on a movie - probably the Lost Boys or the Goonies… Alright, probably the Big Chill.”

“Ah, kultaseni, you know me too well.”

“And you’re going to take a nice long bath. Not do homework or focus on your paper, but sit back and relax. Perhaps you could bring one notebook into the bathroom for yourself, but only to plan my return party!” I could hear the bright grin in his voice - Jyrki really did miss me, it was easy enough to see.

After I wished my love to the tall man in Copenhagen, I began to search for the bottle of wine Jyrki had mentioned, and found it stashed in the trunk I kept at the foot of my bed, along with an old photo album of my childhood. But before I could open either, I fell asleep on the couch, an unlit cigarette dangling between my fingers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title credit; Gerard McMann
> 
> Finnish-to-English;  
> kultaseni - sweetheart
> 
> That’s it, this is the last chapter I have. This fic is over ten years old, so I can’t say that I’m going to revisit this world any time soon, but hey, I also never thought the world would lose its collective mind so you never know. These characters make appearances all over my little universe of writing, though, so my Jyrki’s still around if you know where to look!

**Author's Note:**

> title credit; Journey.
> 
> Finnish-to-English;  
> veli - brother.
> 
> Sinikka Cigarette Watch 1988, how many has she smoked so far in this chapter?! It wasn’t really my intention for her to be a raging chain smoker, it just happened!


End file.
